Leftovers
by caffeineswing9
Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else have they been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language and indecent happenings.
1. Chapter 1

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

Let me explain— this mess totally wasn't my fault.

I was holding a .45 up to the side of my head when it happened— usually, it would've been nothing out of the ordinary, or at the very least, it would've been a little better than my average Tuesday night— but _no_, having a witness to my death _react_ like that wasn't natural at all. And for once, it kind of scared me.

I'm just kidding. I'm not scared of anything.

But _this_. God, what a fuckin' kicker it was to see Kyle's face screwed up like that when I blew out my temple. Don't get me wrong; I'm not suicidal. Don't even make me laugh. I was just bored, and a little overwhelmed with Garrison's math assignment. I just wanted to speed things up a bit and get the goddamn night over with.

I usually don't resort to offing myself, really.

But it was one of those weird moments in life when you wake up in the morning after the usual overnight resurrection and stop to think about the leftover brain gunk on the wall next to your bed. (What, you don't have one of those moments? My fuckin' bad. Guess it's just me.) When you hesitate to throw off your shoddy bedspread and get to your non-existent breakfast of champions because you realize that for once, Kyle was shocked to see you die.

That for once, _anyone_ was shocked to see you die.

That right there is what caused this whole shitty mess in the first place.

I'm Kenny McCormick, current high schooler and currently high as fuck, and it wasn't my fault.

* * *

I was kind of amused by what had happened the night before. Come morning, I really only felt touched by my friend's brevity of concern until I reminded myself that he wouldn't even remember any of it today. It's great. I can pop my head right off with a gun, or take a nap on the train tracks, or have ammonia on my frozen waffles and nobody would give a crap about it twenty-four hours later. It's great. I hate it.

So, instead of getting my hopes up that today would be any different, I swallowed my guts and prepared for another morning of happy greetings and nonchalant jokes, none of which held any regard to my regularly scheduled deaths. Besides, it was better that way. If enough people started remembering what I looked like with my entrails coming out of my side, I'd feel uncomfortable. It's like having your balls hang out, only worse.

Not that I'm complaining about public nudity.

So I put on my boots and had what was probably an expired glass of milk before taking off to the bus stop. There were enough of us who still took it to school every morning, since only Wendy, Token, and Cartman had licenses by now, but the rest of us have been driving illegally since we were twelve. It was just a matter of getting a car, so naturally, I probably wouldn't have one until I was twenty-three. Or until I hot-wired my dad's truck.

As usual, Stan must've gotten a ride with Wendy, since he wasn't waiting with the rest of us. Sure, every once in a blue moon he'd be stuck without his girlfriend's generosity, and he'd have to take the bus with the masses, but that was only when they were fighting. And thank fuckin' god they're not, because a sad Stan is a pussy Stan.

They must've picked up Kyle too, because he wasn't at the bus stop either. It was cool. They could be Super Best Friends in Wendy's car. Though I would've appreciated the ride, I was used to it. Stan and Kyle were better friends to me than anyone else at school, so I wasn't about to curse them for forgetting me at the bus stop. I'm a pretty gracious guy, at the very least.

I'd like to think my parents raised me well. Okay, yeah, I know they didn't raise me at all. It's still the thought that counts, right?

But anyway, when I got to school, Stan and Wendy were in the parking lot, but Kyle wasn't. Granted, Stan and Wendy were in the parking lot together more often than not (lunch in the car, breaks in the car, sex in the car, who knows), but the first bell was about to ring and ten years of knowing Kyle had shown me he'd rather die than be late for chem class.

Of course, with him in advanced placement and me in general science, I wouldn't even find out until fifth period that he was out on a sick leave.

Really, if it wasn't for what happened when I killed myself, I wouldn't have even cared. But fate had made Kyle a shitty Rock-Paper -Scissors player, and so of course he ended up having to bring me my schoolwork after I'd skipped for a day or two. Which meant that he got to witness the GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH! or, as I should truthfully refer to it, me being a jackass. I'm pretty sure I remember him holding back a gag reflex right before I blacked out and died. It was pretty gnarly.

But, for me, I felt kind of bad waking up this morning. Not the usual kind of bad, either. It wasn't the normal my-life-sucks kind of bad. That's when I feel pretty screwed over in life, and get a little down in the dumps over my "condition". No, this time, it was almost as if I felt like a jerk for dying. I don't know why, but it almost felt like Kyle was the victim this time around, not me. And fuck, as much as I hate feeling like the victim, sometimes it's all I have.

So now that Kyle was missing from class AND had stolen my sense of self-pity, I decided he was a douche.

And I didn't feel too great having to visit the douche with Stan after school let out. Especially when he punched me.

"Woah, Kyle— Kyle!" Stan tried, pulling his friend off my side.

"What the _fuck_ is _he_ doing here?"

"Kenny? We're just bringing you your— damn, Kyle, relax, will you?" Stan said, looking at me like _I_ should know why Kyle was going fucking nuts.

"Dude, Kyle, what the hell?" I yelled, still ducking the shorter kid's swings.

"What the hell? What the _hell?_ _You_ tell _me_ what the hell!" Kyle said, his eyes wide. His face was red- what, did he have pink-eye or something?

"What the fuck did I do? _Ow!_"

"Stan! What's the matter with you? Aren't you _seeing_ this?"

"Me?" Stan asked, his voice higher than usual.

"Kyle, dude— calm the fuck down—" I managed to say, inbetween his occasional spot-on hits to the abdomen. In all honesty, I had no clue what I did to invoke the wrath of the Jew.

"You're supposed to be dead!"

Oh. That's what I did.

My bad.

I straightened myself, and made a point to talk, but then I had to stop myself. Wait.

"Say that again?" I asked blankly, staring at Kyle, who seemed to have one hell of a head cold. His eyes were puffy and his nose was very obviously running, at least. Wasn't he fine last night?

"You! You're not supposed to be here. Stan? Stan!" Kyle demanded, looking to his friend for help, but it was pretty clear that Stan had no idea what he was supposed to say.

"You feeling alright dude?" Stan eventually offered, but Kyle wasn't paying attention.

"No. No fucking way," he almost said with a smile. "Kenny— I mean, I was fucking _there_! Stan, I called you!"

At this point, I suggested Stan go get Mrs. Broflovski, because "obviously", Kyle was having a feverish sort of delusion. As for me, I was starting to feel like I really had to shit, because I was in awe of the situation. Did Kyle just say what I thought he said?

And so, the two of us still at the door, I covered Kyle's goddamn douche mouth with my gloved hand to shut him up. I think he tried to bite me.

"Mrfrmmrss! Knny!" Kyle said angrily through the fabric, sounding like what I'd imagine I sound like on a daily basis.

"Look," I whispered, glancing down into his hallway to make sure Stan was already gone into the depths of the house. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but I—"

Kyle managed to rip my hand off his face. "Me? _ME?_ Last I heard your funeral was going to be on Friday! So you tell me what the hell is wrong with _me_," he shouted, before I frantically attempted to get him to shut up. Which was weird for me to do. It wasn't like it was a secret that I died. It was just that nobody really knew. It was kind of like Cartman's blog; it isn't private, it's just unknown. And _god _does he hate that.

I took a breath. "Okay. So, I died?"

"I was up all night! I missed _school_!" Kyle said, like it was a big deal for him. "I can't get the image out of my mind and you show up the next day?" he said, throwing another punch, which missed.

So Kyle wasn't sick. He'd been upset? Like, seriously?

"You saw me die?"

"How many fucking times do I have to say it?"

"You saw me die. As in, you remember me dying." I looked at him. I scanned every last region of his face to make sure he wasn't making all this shit up. Or to make sure he wasn't crazy. It could happen, you know. It'd be an odd coincidence if he really _was_ crazy, and just _happened_ to have a crazy schizoid dream in which I died last night.

That'd be pretty funny.

I looked at his cloudy, soul-torn eyes, that were watered down with what I presumed were tears and tiredness, and felt as though I could feel his goddamn ripped up heart next to my own.

I laughed.

I really shouldn't have, I know. But I took one look at Kyle and I grinned harder than I had in months. And I cracked up.

"What— what the fuck is wrong with you?" Kyle stammered, suddenly dropping his guard.

"You remember me dying!"

"Yeah, I—"

"You remember!"

I think I was dancing. I don't dance, so I wouldn't know.

"Yeah . . . "

I realized that Kyle had no idea why I was laughing in his face, and was now starting to tear up again. Hell, I had no idea why I was smiling this hard. But for me, for the first time, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, and I was loving it. Someone had remembered. Someone _knew_ about it, for more than a day. Was I dreaming?

Kyle might've been crying, because he was rooted in place. But he was glaring at me. I was really, _really_ happy he was glaring at me.

"You're not supposed to remember," I laughed. I hugged him. I did everything.

He stared at me, now reduced to pieces, utterly confused and terrified and angry and sad all at once, and I clung to him. "This was never supposed to happen!" I said choking on my words.

And he pushed me, both hands at once, so hard that I fell off his paved doorstep and fell into the snow on the lawn. Kyle pushed me and slammed the door on his way in.

I was never so grateful in my life.

* * *

A/N: I'm taking a chance and going with a pairing that will be a challenge for me to write. Yay! This is more of a prologue of sorts, so up and away we go from here, I s'pose.


	2. Chapter 2

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

I'll be the first to admit I didn't tackle the issue with nearly enough grace. After all, I did kind of make it seem like a joke. So while I was contorting madly with happiness in the snow outside, Kyle was probably inside thinking he'd lost his marbles or contracted Mad Cow or something like that. I'm sure that's how Stan saw it, at the very least.

But, in the meantime, I was in a state of disbelief. Kyle had been home _mourning_ me, for christ's sake. Looking back, _that_ was funny. If he ever got over the fact that I may very well be the living, breathing undead, I could use that in any instance of blackmail against him.

I laughed at my own stupid ideas for a while, until the sky was saturated with a murky grayish-black cloud covering and the sun went down. Although I really should've been getting home for what certainly would've been another dinner of back-yard beef (I haven't seen the neighbor's cat in a while, if you catch my drift), I was kind of compelled to sit complacently in one place for the rest of the night. Yeah, sure, actually staying in Kyle's yard overnight would've been fuckin' weird, but something in me wanted to take in the fact that for once, for one odd moment in my usual shitfuck of a day, something uncanny happened. It was surreal, and almost cool enough for me not to sound faggy.

Eventually, I forced myself up and walked home. Though I'd just got decked a few times, and locked out of the Broflovski's place, I considered myself extremely lucky and was in a heightened mood. Maybe I'd luck out again, and it'd be a fast food night.

Or, scratch all of that, and I'd lose my house key on the way home and would have to break in through the window. Hey, story of my life.

But I was halfway done with getting the screen off the frame when I heard someone (or more likely, a something) approach me from behind. Instinctively, I made for a crotch shot, because if it was a dude, I'd get him in the balls, and if it was a girl or an animal, they'd at least be pretty annoyed.

"AGH— mother_fucking_— KINNY!"

I watched as Cartman took to the ground, and started rolling around like he was in a goddamn fire. Well, there went my good mood.

"What the fuck, man? AUGHH you killed me!"

I ignored him and looked to his right, and suddenly became very glad I didn't hit Butters instead. It would've been like punting a puppy or something. He offered a meek smile, and seemed to be carrying a fat wad of pamphlets. He wasn't wearing a tie or a bike helmet though, so at least that was a good sign.

"Well, hi Kenny," he offered, sneaking glances at Cartman who was yelling out something regarding testicle insurance. "Sorry if we scared yuh or anything."

I gave him a "hey".

"Kinny. Kinny, listen to me—" Cartman barked, still on the ground. I wasn't about to help him up, if that's what he was expecting. I honestly don't think I've ever had enough upper body strength for that. "Okay. I'll forgive you for PUNCHING MY SACK if you'll join me for a moment of conversation. Listen."

It was that obnoxious sort of business-voice he used every once and a while, when he wanted something. Okay, well he _always_ wanted something, but that's aside from the point.

I unwillingly gave him an "okay", like I always do. I learned a long time ago that it was better to let him talk and get it over with than to bother saying no. And I _really _wanted to get this over with.

"Okay, get ready for this. Are you paying attention? Alright. Picture this: thousands of children dying, Kinny. They're so hungry. They're calling your name!"

I tried not to roll my eyes or anything. Cartman was waving a hand in midair, and I was really wishing I could get inside faster.

"They're so _hungry_, Kinny! I mean, okay, come on, you of all people should know what that feels like," he said flatly. "But what? What's that? You can SAVE them? You can SAVE the children?"

I looked at Butters, who was captivated. I assumed Cartman used the same speech on Butters a half hour ago to get him to hold the pamphlets.

"You can feed them, Kinny! In fact, I have a product here that will revolutionize South Park AND get rid of the homeless Mexicans down by the drugstore, and half of the proceeds will go toward kids in Madagascar! How wonderful, right Kinny?" He nudged Butters in the side, and I was handed a tri-fold advertisement for some sort of pesticide.

"So, what am _I_ supposed to do? Buy this shit?"

"Okay, look," Cartman said, dropping his salesman charade. "I need fifty dollars down on this. You'll be an investor, and I'll get some startup."

"No way, dude." I pulled at another corner of the window I was slowly tearing apart.

"Kinny! Look how many times I've helped you. You totally owe me."

"For _what_?"

"I bought you that concert ticket that one time, remember?"

"_I_ bought that."

"Nuh-uh! I went on Ticketmaster and everything. I even used my credit card!"

I didn't bother recounting the fact that I'd used my own money for both our tickets. And I paid that money to the National Bank of Fucktard, so we could use his debit account. I didn't even bother asking why Cartman had a bank card at age eleven.

I popped off the screen and was working on getting the glass pane to slide up when I decided I was running out of patience. Normally, I can take extended doses of Cartman, but for some reason I wasn't expecting it to be him behind me in the first place. I don't know, I guess I had this weird idea that it'd be Stan or Kyle. It wasn't a hope, really, it was just that I thought they'd want more of an explanation out of me.

Then again, I'm sure Kyle wouldn't explain anything to Stan that made him look like he was going insane. He'd probably force himself to swallow his pride completely, and if that was the case, he'd never talk about any of this weird shit ever again. I didn't want that to happen.

Not until I had an answer.

In the meantime, I was stuck with _this_ fatass until I could duck my way into my living room.

"E-Eric? I don't think Kenny's that interested. I'm sure we could find the money somewhere else," Butters said, twiddling the corners of the pamphlets.

"Goddammit Butters, shut up! Don't give him the _option_."

"I already said no," I told him.

"Kinny, you're going to pay me back for all the times I helped you and your welfare-cock-sucking family, and you're going to do it tonight!"

"Fuck off." I hoisted myself up into the open window frame.

"Fine!" Cartman spat, his hands surrendered to the air. "Fine, Kinny! I'll go home! I'll stop wasting both our fucking time!" He made a sort of angry spasm, and kind of looked like he was about to regurgitate an alien before he turned to walk back toward the sidewalk. "But don't think this is over! _Fuck_, Butters, hurry up!"

I've known Cartman for ten years. Once I was completely inside my living room, I reached under the end table and grabbed my dad's pellet rifle.

Cartman turned around before he left the yard. "Mark my words, Kinny! I'm giving you fair warning! I'll be back when you least expect it, and you better have my cash for me by then! You hear me?"

I smiled as my first shot grazed his ear. He made some loud noises and directed a few 'fucks' at me before I shot in his direction again.

I've known Cartman for ten years, and I knew he'd be back as soon as he'd had dinner, and maybe after an episode of Maury. I slid the window shut.

I really just wanted to sleep, and as much as I would've liked an actual meal, I toasted a pack of off-brand Pop Tarts and headed for my room. Seeing Cartman's ridiculous gut, which had only managed to grow proportionally with his height, sort of took away my appetite. And having him beg for money from _me_, of all people, only took away my patience. I'd had a really long fucking day.

The gun I'd been messing with last night was still on the floor, and I kicked it toward my closet. It came to a rest against the wood paneling with a hard thud, followed by two more thuds from throwing my shoes off. Normally, seeing my dad's household weaponry wasn't that big of a deal to me (at least not since elementary school— back then, I actually went the extra mile to prevent myself from dying, so sharp objects and automatic glocks tended to freak me out). But for some reason, I really didn't want to deal with any of it today, unless it was necessary to fend off Cartman. Otherwise, I wasn't in the mood.

Was it because I was feeling a little better today than I was the day before? Yeah, so shooting myself was a stupid idea in retrospect, but it wasn't like anything _bad_ came from it. It wasn't like I was depressed or anything. I was just, well, apathetic.

A pang of guilt took priority over my hunger, and I leaned back into my bed. Of _course_ I didn't want to look at the goddamn gun— I'd already thrown Kyle down a black well of unwarranted grief. And despite that, I felt very selfishly happy over the fact that he'd missed a whole day of school because of it. _Would Stan have done the same? _I wondered, seeing if the same sort of happiness would come from imagining that scenario. And when it did, I felt really sick for enjoying it.

I bit a mouthful of Pop Tart and pulled at the bedspread. Okay, so I was becoming a sadist. That was the explanation. I simply enjoyed the idea of Kyle, or Stan, or anyone really, crying their fucking eyes out because of me. I'd figured out that much . . . until my conscience kicked in again, and made me feel like shit.

I sighed. No, I could never really enjoy Kyle's grief. Not for long anyway.

I figured I'd have to apologize to him tomorrow, if he still acknowledged the fact that I _had_ "come back from the dead" and accepted that he wasn't balls crazy.

Yeah right. He probably wouldn't ever talk about it again.

And then I heard a noise.

My doorknob suddenly twisted and my door jerked open, and my concentration was drastically interrupted when I rolled sideways off my bed to avoid whatever weapon Cartman surely had with him this time around—

"Kenny?"

I had half a Pop Tart sticking out of my mouth, and I was under my bed. I'd nearly asphyxiated myself when I realized it wasn't Cartman.

"Kaiihhr?" I managed to hum through all 200 calories of my S'mores Sensation, staring back at Kyle like he was Lord Buddha himself.

"Um— is this a bad time? Or should I?—"

"No," I quickly said, freeing my face of all things toaster pastry. "I mean, no, I thought you were Cartman."

"Why would Cartman—" he started, but he quickly raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "Never mind, I'm not even going to ask."

I hesitated for a moment, unhooking the sleeve of my parka from one of the bedsprings, and slid out from under the mattress. I wasn't sure why Kyle was here in the first place, and I wasn't sure how the hell he'd managed to get in my house (when I had to break in through the freakin' window), but it all felt incredibly convenient.

And then it immediately felt incredibly awkward.

"So, then . . . " Kyle started, looking much better than he had the first time I saw him today, but still like he needed to vomit. A few hours ago, I'd laughed in his fucking face. I took one look at him and felt horrible all over again.

"So," I agreed, if you could really agree with a word like that. "What, um. What's up?"

Kyle didn't make eye contact, but he checked the time on his cell phone before doing anything else. "I wanted to apologize for earlier. For, you know, locking you out and everything," he said, diminishing in volume and not bothering to look up from his Evo (sure, he just got the damn thing last week, but he couldn't have been _that_ invested in it, could he?).

"Oh," I said, sitting back down on the edge of my bed. "It's cool." I unintentionally watched him pocket the phone. He glanced around the room, and I did too, even though I see it every day. "You want a coke or something?" I asked.

Kyle's line of sight rested on the gun by my closet.

"I think we only have diet, though," I continued, though my eyes locked on the closet too. "It's all my mom buys, since it's usually on sale—"

"Kenny."

I shut up.

"What did I see last night?" Kyle asked quietly.

I didn't say anything right away, but I broke off the corner of the other Pop Tart that was still on my nightstand. "You saw me being stupid. That's all."

"_Kenny_," Kyle said more deliberately this time, and my throat tightened. Even though I've told the guys thousands of times, even though I've insisted I've died _thousands_ of times, it was hard for me to bring it up this time, right now. "Kenny, I saw you die. I saw you _die_, Kenny."

"I was just being stupid, that's all—"

"Kenny! Will you answer me _seriously_?" Kyle said, louder than I was expecting. "I don't know if this is some sort of _joke_ to you, but I know what I saw!"

I didn't say anything. I'd seen Kyle angry before, but this wasn't _angry_. I didn't know what emotion this was.

"Well," I finally started, "I guess it _is_ a joke to me. Or at least a joke _on_ me." I shrugged, giving a half-hearted smile like it was an apology.

Kyle parted his lips, like he was going to say something, but retracted the statement and stared at me. It made me kind of uncomfortable, really. "Why are you still alive?" he asked in a hollow tone.

When I finally gained the courage to look back at him, I immediately felt the weight in his eyes. One— two— three seconds passed, and I shrugged again.

I thought he wouldn't like my answer. I thought he'd get fed up with my awful explanations, or lack thereof, and leave. I thought at the very least, he'd study me like I was a goddamn insect for any sign of an answer or clue, or glare at me like I was withholding information. But he didn't.

He didn't do anything.

I sat patiently, albeit with unease, until he said something. And that took longer than I wanted.

"Stan doesn't know."

I hummed a not-word in response.

"He doesn't remember. He doesn't even have a record of me calling him last night after it happened." Kyle shifted his weight. "He doesn't even have my number in his call history, Kenny. _Nothing_. It's like— well, it's like," he said, apparently stumbling for the right words.

"Like it never happened?" I asked with an inappropriate grin. "Sounds about right."

Kyle finally made eye contact. "_Why?_" he asked. "What the fuck _are_ you, Kenny? Some sort of alien?"

I almost laughed. "Poor as shit, underweight, devishly handsome, occasionally homosexual, and an 'accident' according to my mom, but an alien? No way," I said. "Well, not that I know of."

Kyle's expression was still greatly contrasted to my own. I dropped the smile. "Look, I wish I could give you an answer. I wish I _had_ one. But the point is, I have no fucking clue, and for some reason, you're in on it now." I shook my head in disbelief. "You're the first to remember."

Kyle eventually nodded, and took in a big breath before speaking. "Okay. So you can't die."

"Nope."

He sniffed at some loose congestion.

"Great." He moved toward my nightstand and broke off a piece of my leftover Pop Tart. "And for some reason, I know about it, and nobody else does or ever will."

"Probably. Yeah."

Kyle, who still looked like an utter wreck, leaned against my bedroom wall and raised an eyebrow. "Alright." He took a bite, and chewed it in our mutual silence, staring straight ahead in his acceptance of all that was sheer madness.

I didn't dare say anything after that, but something inside of my chest cavity loosened up. I guess, somehow, we'd just come to terms with the fact that Kyle wasn't insane, and my life was eternal and shit-filled. Kyle hadn't cried since the afternoon, and I should've been in a casket by now, but hey, that's life. Horrible, terrifying, filled with lethal objects and illegal substances.

I was going to ask Kyle what time it was, since my clock battery died weeks ago, but he spoke first.

"Wait. Homosexual?"

And then I was going to give him some jackassy sort of answer, but I died first.

Cartman threw a brick through my window, and it cracked my skull.

Hey, it happens.

* * *

A/N: Was gunna get this written/online earlier, but my laptop decided to crap out on me. Hooray technology!


	3. Chapter 3

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

So, something funny happened after I died again.

Call me unreliable, but I lied. I wasn't dead after all. Of course, there was no way of me knowing whether I was lying or not, because Cartman's gratuitous blow to the head had rendered me unconscious. But, for once, I was shaken when I woke up, because I definitely _wasn't_ in my bed, and I definitely _wasn't_ painlessly reincarnated like usual.

I was in Hells Pass. And thanks to _god_ knows what force of nature, I was propped up in a hospital bed with a stale IV in my left arm and a plastic bracelet around my right. Though it wasn't the worst situation, as I didn't see and casts or catheters, I still would've rather been killed and rebirthed than stuck in an empty room for a few days. Nobody had given me an estimated time of departure, of course, but I had experience with these sorts of things. If I was lucky, I'd probably be out of there in a week.

So, because of this, it was only natural that I wanted to smack Kyle upside the head for doing the "right" thing and calling an ambulance, as I later learned was what happened. Sure, when somebody starts erupting with blood, it's protocol to save their life and all, but my situation is hardly normal. Rule #1 in the Kenny McCormick handbook should read as follows: If the injury is worse than a broken limb, and will result in prolonged pain and suffering and/or months of physical therapy, do not resuscitate. Just fuckin' _kill _me already.

And I was far from being put out of my misery. I'd missed the MTV Woodies because of the stupid parental blocks on the hospital televisions; I had to come up with excuses as to why I had so much THC in my system; I had to listen to my parents complain about how I was the sole cause of their financial misfortune due to my medical history. Things didn't get much better when Liane brought Cartman in to "check in on his best friend after his horrible accident". Because surely, _Cartman_ hadn't thrown the freakin' brick at my head.

At least I didn't give him the satisfaction of successfully murdering me. But all that meant was he'd try even harder. While the thought of being stuck here until next Tuesday was bad enough, the idea of Cartman coming at me with AIDS infested syringes while I slept was honestly terrifying.

So I enlisted in a task force to keep watch. Okay, really, I didn't do a damn thing, but Kyle and Stan came over at least for a few hours a day, which made me feel a little better. We watched a lot of Oprah, and they even brought me my homework, which I never ended up doing. Unfortunately, Stan never left Kyle's side, which meant I couldn't discuss Kyle's no-no openly. Texting Kyle didn't work either, since the two of them were always watching Youtube videos on their phones, or looking at photos, or planning their faggy futures together in which they rode off into the sunset on a goddamn white stallion every day.

I made that last part up. And then I texted it to Craig, who thought it was funny.

When Stan finally separated from Kyle, it was because his dad picked him up early to leave for practice. I said thanks, and told him to say hi to his parents for me since they were worried. Once he was out of earshot I immediately picked up a water bottle, turned to Kyle, and threw it at his head.

"OW! What the hell, man?"

"That's for saving my goddamn life, you idiot!"

Kyle readjusted his hat. "What? What was I supposed to do? Let you bleed out?" He leaned down to pick up the water bottle and set it back on the side table. "Sorry, but I'm still getting used to this immortality thing," he huffed.

I leaned back into the bed. "I mean, thanks for your concern and everything, but a surgical steel plate in the head isn't really worth it," I said.

"Well, sorry if I think it is."

I started to pick at a hangnail. Kyle. Sermon on the Mount. Preach away and tell me what's freakin' worth it. I insist.

But, though his view on life (or, in my case, not-life) kind of irritated me, I wasn't really angry with him. I guess I would've been more pissed had he just left me there on my floor with a dent in my head. All the other times I'd died, that's what usually happened, at least. I was seriously starting to wonder why this time was different.

Maybe I _was_ an alien.

I ripped off some skin near my fingernail. Kyle winced, but I think I was smiling. "I guess I can always work the streets to pay off the medical bill," I joked.

Kyle shot a dirty look at me, but he should've come to expect comments like that from me by now. Though I guess they were emptier promises when I was nine. Hearing it from a fifteen year-old, on the other hand, is probably alarming.

But it was kind of funny to see Kyle's alarm system go off, now that he wasn't deep in a disturbed regret anymore.

"Fine then, I'm sorry. I promise I won't save your life ever again," he said, sliding open his phone and tapping at the keyboard.

"Cool," I said. He didn't respond. He did laugh at his screen, though.

"Stan?" I asked, already knowing the answer. "What'd he say?"

"Nothing. Just an inside joke," he said, almost smiling again. He went back to texting, and I said something unimportant and turned back to the TV. Of course it was an inside joke. It was always something nobody else ever got to hear.

I wasn't exactly jealous of Stan and Kyle's friendship, but I always felt a little out of place whenever I saw them together. Like, _exclusively_. Sure, ninety-nine percent of the time we all hung out together, which was a feat in the high school standard of friendship, but that tiny last percentile was composed of so many things I never got to experience. I've never had a best friend— I had best _friends_, multiple, but that just meant I always had to hang out with Cartman by default. And Cartman was seriously towards the bottom of my best friends totem pole.

So, I wasn't jealous. I was unhappy.

I was second-pick.

I tried not to watch as Kyle finished up his super-hilarious-inside-joke and pocketed his phone, but I did— and then I noticed something odd, even by our usual standards. I squinted at him, to be sure, but I wasn't imagining things.

"Wow. You're pretty red."

Kyle looked up. "What?"

"Your face, dude. Are you fucking blushing?" I asked with a stupid smirk.

"What? No way."

"Yeah, you totally are!" I laughed, which caused a pain in the side of my head. "Holy freakin' crap. No way."

"'No way' what? I'm not doing anything!"

"Stan," I said. "It's Stan, isn't it?"

"What?" Kyle retorted, his face deepening in color from the argument. "What the fuck, Kenny?"

"You were just talking to him, weren't you?" I asked. "Damn, I knew you guys were gay, but not _gay_."

Kyle stood up and made a sudden movement that was probably meant to get me to stop joking around, but he stopped himself. And then he glared at me. "What?" I asked.

"_You_ were the one who said you're into guys," he jabbed back, staring me down as if he intended to beat me up again. Only this time, he couldn't lock me out of his freakin' house.

"Oh no, excuse me, I said _occasionally _homosexual. Don't twist my words. I'm still into tits."

"But—" Kyle started, his screwed up face sifting grain by ginger grain into what looked a lot like confusion.

"But what?"

He shook his head as he sat back down. "Never mind. Can we drop the subject please?"

I smiled as I lifted my hands up in a defense offering, but when it became apparent Kyle wasn't going to say anything else, I shifted my attention back to Oprah. I think she was interviewing some psychic kid. And then she gave him a car.

Though I wanted to prod Kyle for details and entertainment value, I instead occupied myself otherwise. No use beating a dead Jewish horse, especially over a subject that only Super Best Friends got to discuss. Kyle and I weren't Super Best Friends. We weren't Super anything.

The room, however, was Super quiet.

So I turned off the TV. I wasn't in the mood for Oprah today.

I was going to tell Kyle he could go home, but before I could say it, he caught my attention first.

"Kenny?"

Kyle was sitting cross-armed and was intently staring at his shoes. He mumbled something.

"What?" I asked, because the only muffled and misguided speech I could understand was my own.

He wasn't much louder than the first time. "I said . . . I mean, don't tell anyone."

I looked at him for a second, and nodded. I knew what he meant.

And for some reason, I wasn't quite as jealous anymore.

"Sure thing, Kyle."

* * *

By next Wednesday, I was out of the hospital and swimming in whorish sympathy. Though a lot of girls in South Park didn't give a fuck, the ones who liked me offered to help me out all day at school. I had to thank my parents for not producing a shitty looking son, because I might've well been in Disneyland as soon as the bell rang. I had one to carry my stuff to class, one to carry my lunch to the table, and two to drive me home. Unfortunately, we only got halfway there before the girl in the back passenger seat was killed by a sniper bullet.

I sighed. The Fatass had sucky aim.

After I got out and thanked the not-dead-one for the ride, I walked the rest of the way home. And after a day or two, life started to crawl back to its usual attentionless pace, because they launched a week of remembrance and crisis counseling in her name.

"Dude. I don't even know who this girl is," Stan said during lunch the next day. "Are you sure she went to our school?"

"She was in my Home Ec class, I think," Wendy told him. Yeah, she routinely hung out with us now. We got used to it.

"Kenny, you were there, right? Where'd you find her?" Stan asked.

"Home Ec."

"There. See?"

Stan popped open Wendy's soda can and took a sip. They were at the point where apparently, you didn't need to ask. "I still don't get it. Why do we need to spend a whole week on her? Wasn't it supposed to be breast cancer week or something?"

"She died of breast cancer," Clyde said from the other side of the table.

"She did _not_, she was kidnapped, wasn't she?" Bebe retorted.

To my right, Kyle let his forehead his the tabletop with a _thunk_.

"You okay man?" Stan asked.

Kyle spoke into the linoleum. "People are retarded."

And sure enough, the rest of the day was spent listening to crackpot theories about what's-her-face's death, with stories varying as widely as "being murdered by a serial rapist" to "drowning to death in an underground freshwater spring". We had nothing better to do, anyway— it didn't matter what _actually_ happened.

Well, unless it was an attempt to get me killed. Which it was.

I think I would've preferred she'd died in a freshwater spring. At least that way, it wasn't my fault.

"Why was Cartman trying to shoot you in the first place?" Kyle asked at the end of the day, while we were unloading our lockers. "Aside from the obvious reason that he's, you know, Cartman."

"He's trying to get money out of me," I said, shoving my math book into my backpack.

"But you don't have any," Kyle said plainly. He had a knack for pointing out the painfully obvious.

"I know."

"That's stupid."

"I know."

There were a lot of stupid things that had been happening lately.

"And, I mean," Kyle said, leaning against his now-closed locker. "What would happen if he succeeded? Wouldn't you just wake up the next day and be fine?"

"Yeah. That's usually the way it works." Emphasis on the 'usually', as I gave Kyle a quick smirk.

"Then," Kyle shrugged, "Why don't you just _let_ him kill you?"

I glanced at Kyle, who seemed perfectly placated about the idea. Like it didn't bother him at all. I suddenly got a weird mixed emotion, kind of like a cross between happiness and the feeling you get when you pass a urinal stone.

"I think he wouldn't even know he did it in the first place, the morning after. He'd keep freakin' trying."

"Oh. Well, that's stupid too."

"I know." I shut my locker and clicked the padlock in place. "At least he got me out of a week of school. Wanna help me with math?"

"I brought you notes in the hospital, didn't I? Where the hell did they go?"

"Dunno. I lost them."

Kyle sighed, clearly irritated, but he agreed to help me out anyway. I don't know why.

"I guess I really owe you. You guys didn't have to come over every day like that."

"Of course we had to," Kyle said. "We're friends, aren't we?"

I blinked. "Yeah." At least, if we weren't Super Best Friends, we were Super Average Friends. I'd been okay with that for ten years, so far. It wasn't as bad as I sometimes thought it was.

"Really, Kyle, thanks."

He nodded, and then he paused. "Thanks for keeping quiet." He looked over at me and offered a small smile. My mouth went dry.

"No problem."

Super Average Friends.

"Cool. Well," Kyle said, regaining his poise. It was obvious that he had a hard time talking about anything even remotely embarrassing. "I'm gunna go catch up with Stan and Wendy before they take off." He looked at me for a moment, and I looked up from zipping up my backpack, and we looked at each other.

We'd been looking a lot, lately.

I managed to say something instead of staring at him like a goddamn gorilla. "Yeah. I'll catch you later."

I watched him make fourteen sneaker-muffled steps and turn the corner before I finally slung on my backpack.

Kyle confused me.

* * *

A/N: **HOW TO UPDATE. **Found it on the forums this morning. I'd copy the link in directly, but for some reason it isn't displaying properly. Go to "forums" and the thread "Error Type 2 Bypass" and the solution's posted up there. And a big thanks to everyone who's read this thing so far! Good luck with uploading!


	4. Chapter 4

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

But it wasn't even three days later, and Kyle had already gone beyond "confusing".

He'd gone absolutely fucking nuts.

I was making a sandwich. I wasn't all that hungry, and I probably didn't want as much mayonnaise as I'd spread on top, but I was making a sandwich nonetheless. And from the moment I grabbed the condiments out of the refrigerator door to the minute I slapped a slice of bread on top, I was _damn_ certain I was making a sandwich.

I should explain a few things. I'm not usually so focused on my food, even when it includes real meat and tomatoes for once. Normally, I would've already eaten the freakin' thing, which was currently sitting on top of the Broflovski's countertop, but I was too busy staring at it. I was too busy keeping myself occupied.

Right before this, something weird happened.

I don't know.

But, as long as I stared at my sandwich, piled on top of whole-grain bread (because apparently that's all Kyle's mom ever bought), I wouldn't have to go back upstairs.

My reflection in the microwave proved that I was a little shaken up. _Me_, of all people. Sexual encounters were my crowning moments of glory! Why the fuck was I avoiding going back upstairs?

I called myself a pussy. I ate my sandwich in the kitchen.

I'll backtrack. Me and Kyle decided that today was a good day to work on our homework together. I needed tutoring (and for once, I _swear_ I wasn't referring to the "tutoring" I did with girls), and everyone else was too busy after school to hang out, so there really wasn't an excuse _not_ to study. So, about an hour ago, I knocked on the front door and was let inside by a slightly taller Ike than I was used to. I hadn't been over at Kyle's house in a while, because Sheila had put a bunch of shitty parental blocks on the TV and we couldn't watch Spike without jacking up the cable box. We'd taken to Stan's place ever since.

Meanwhile, Ike was kind of pissed that I'd interrupted his Skype session with some girl in Vancouver. If he wasn't trying to score, I would've talked to him otherwise. But I left him to his virtual pootang (yeah, okay, they were just talking) and jogged up to Kyle's room— I chucked my backpack inside the door first. Aside from knocking over Kyle's trash can with it, nothing else went wrong for at least half an hour.

"You getting any of this dude?" Kyle asked me, letting his scribbled-upon notebook fall into his lap. "Or do I have to go over it again?"

I solved for x.

"Jeez, calm your tits. I got an answer this time."

Kyle leaned over and checked my work, his reading glasses tilting downwards as he scanned it. "But that's wrong."

"No it's not. I can plug it into the equation and everything."

Kyle frowned. "But it doesn't work that way. You've gotta follow the rules, Kenny."

"Fuck the rules. It's easier like this."

"_Dude_," Kyle groaned, straightening up. "How are you even in Trig?"

I leaned back on my hands, letting them sink into the fluff of Kyle's comforter. "I can't help it if I'm great at standardized testing," I said casually, glazing over the fact that I'd guessed on half the placement test. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a dumbass by any means. Give me an essay and I'd write you a scripture. Hell, I could get it stamped and approved by God the next time I hit up heaven. But throw an equation at me, and I didn't get shit.

"Okay, look," Kyle sighed, clearly getting more and more frustrated with the fact that I was taking up more than half of his bed. "Just— here, this page. That rule right there. Follow those steps."

"I thought that was a theorem."

"It's a rule."

I scooted closer to the book. "This sucks."

Kyle looked at me for a moment, and then got up to skip the song that was currently playing off his laptop iTunes. He spoke with his back turned to me. "If you would've looked at the notes I gave you last week you would've been fine," he said flatly.

"If you would've let me die, I wouldn't have missed so much class in the first place."

Kyle turned his head and stared at me.

I didn't realize it until the pre-chorus of the song he'd put on. "What?"

"Nothing." Kyle pushed off the edge of his desk and plopped back on the bed in a hefty movement.

"_What_?" I asked again. Kyle shook his head.

"Nothing. I told you I was sorry. I just didn't realize this was _my _fault," he said tersely. If I didn't know any better, I would've said Kyle was passive-aggressive. But I knew better. He was just being a jerk.

"It's not. It wasn't. All I'm saying is—"

"— I know what you're saying," he interrupted. "It's cool. I'm just trying to make up for putting you in the hospital, and you're not helping."

Of course. Kyle and I never really hung out by ourselves anymore, so it made sense that he felt like he owed me. Like I was an obligation.

I guess I was, in a way.

"Okay, dude," I started, feeling that weird sense of guilt creep back into my chest. It was always _guilt_ around Kyle. "I didn't mean it that way. I'm glad you're helping me out."

Kyle sat with his arms crossed, and he was looking away. He looked like a kid—- and judging by the way he wasn't answering me, he was acting like one too.

"Kyle," I said. "Come on."

"Nnn-nnn," he hummed. It was almost comical.

"Kyle, gimme a normal answer."

His eyes flicked sideways at me. I tried not to look at them, because they seemed to have a greater effect on me than usual. That goddamn _effect_.

"You're not normal. You don't get a normal answer," he said.

"What?" I asked, staring at him. "That's your comeback? Seriously?" I repositioned myself, so we were parallel. "_You're_ not normal either."

"I'm more normal than _you_." Kyle said it with a bit of a mocking tone in his voice. I could tell that he wasn't as pissed as he'd been a moment before. It was the same tone he used in "fights" with Stan.

"So what, I'm a freak of nature. At least I'm not crushing on anything that came out of Sharon Marsh's vagina."

Kyle's face dropped as he shoved me sideways. "You said you'd shut up about that."

"I said I wouldn't tell anyone. Which I haven't."

Kyle got that piercing look in his glare again, but leaned forward against his now-bent knees. "Just fucking forget about it, will you? I'll drop the hospital thing." His glasses sloped forward as he rested his chin on his arms.

"No you won't," I teased lightly. "You'll start arguing with me about it again tomorrow." I knew these things. I knew Kyle.

He looked like he was going to say something shitty in return, but stopped himself. I scanned half a page of my textbook as he focused on his door, chewing on the side of his lip like it wasn't a part of his body. He didn't seem to notice he was doing it, at least.

I reread a sentence once or twice, waiting for him to come up with something to say, because I didn't like the weird silence he'd drifted into. When he finally took in a breath, I was glad something came out of his mouth other than more air.

"It's really . . . well, it's really not that normal, is it," he said simply, like he'd figured out another math problem.

"What's not?" I asked.

"The way I feel about Stan. In regards to our relationship."

I shrugged. "Not really, no." I fingered the edge of the page, staring down a triangle with two or three variables stuck inside of it. "But it happens a lot, I guess. Liking guys. Not a lot for me, I mean, but it happens."

Now, let me pause you right there. This is where I needed to fucking chew over my sandwich like there was no tomorrow. And after that. I'd probably make another one. Because right at that moment, after I said that to Kyle, _it_ happened, and _it_ made me uncomfortable as shit.

Kyle's eyesight never left the carpet. "Yeah," he said, his voice trailing off. I felt kind of bad for him, since he obviously wasn't used to dealing with _issues_ in his life. And he definitely wasn't as okay with the idea of sexuality as I was. Hell, I didn't have a sexuality. I just liked to fuck things.

We marinated in a cooperative silence for a few seconds, before I figured I'd go back to my math work. I don't know if I saw it as being respectful, or just escaping the suckiness that was Kyle's depression, but either way it had to get done before dinner. I made a movement, a tiny muscle twitch, to reach for my pencil again, but all bodily systems were interrupted by something I didn't see coming.

At _all_.

Kyle's face collided with mine, quickly and unevenly, as he pressed against my mouth in a warm second of confusion—-

And he pulled away before I could even comprehend what he'd just done. I felt my face rise in heat, proportional to my rise in eyebrow expression.

"I'm sorry," Kyle quickly said, his eyes wide. "I didn't mean—-"

"Kyle?" I was able to grind out of my vocal cords. "What the fuck, man?"

"I don't know— I'm sorry, I—-"

I stared at him. "Dude! I'm not—- I mean, not with _you_," I stammered.

Kyle panicked and shifted sideways. "I know, I know—- me neither, not _you_, I just—- _ungh_ I just wanted to know what it _felt _like—-"

I felt the urgent need to unzip my jacket. "It's—- it's cool, man. Just don't—" I said, unable to finish my sentence. I didn't want Kyle to feel bad, but I was having one hell of a fight-or-flight moment. I got up to pee. Or some similar excuse.

When I said I liked to fuck things, I didn't mean I liked to fuck my friends.

I made my way downstairs to the kitchen, to where I made my sandwich and proceeded to eat it. I tried not to worry about going back up to Kyle's room, because I knew he wouldn't try it twice, but still, something made me feel sick. I had no problem with his homosexual experimentation, as long as it wasn't with me. And the more I thought about it, the worse I felt.

I made a second sandwich, and avoided going back upstairs.

Not because he kissed me. That wasn't what made me dizzy.

I didn't like to fuck my friends. I didn't like to _kiss _my friends.

_But I really liked thinking about it. _

And I'd really liked Kyle's mouth.

* * *

A/N: Might have slightly slower updates until next month. So every two weeks instead of every week. Kinda.


	5. Chapter 5

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

To put it simply, Kyle tried avoiding me after that. A bunch of us went to Sizzler after class on Tuesday, which was great, because I was pretty lit all afternoon. Inbetween popping day-old french fries and downing three glasses of chocolate milk, I was bound to have digestion problems later tonight— but let's not get into that. Where my _real_ problem was nested was between Stan and Butters, picking at the last of the croutons on his plate, and daring not to make eye contact with anyone surnamed McCormick. If I didn't know any better, I would've guessed he was too embarrassed to bring the subject of his "accident" up. If I didn't know any better, I would've said his mind was filled with homo-erotic flashbacks about me and my marijuana-scented hoodie, or about how he'd briefly used me as an experiment for his own sexual preference,or yadda fuckin' yadda.

But, unfortunately, I knew better. I knew he was too preoccupied with the fact that Stan's elbow was precariously close to his own. I knew he was controlling his muscle movements in order to pass as uninterested and unwanting, and controlling his laughter so he didn't seem over-eager in front of his "super best friend". Well, fuck me in the ass. I knew every last damn motive behind Kyle's behavior, or at least, I was damn good at inferring them, because I watched him. I'd been a freaking creep all weekend. Ever since we'd done homework together, I'd been shell-shocked into glancing over at the jew every ten minutes.

I wasn't attracted to Kyle. I was just— well, curious.

And my curiosity led to frustration when I realized he wasn't going to talk to me, despite the fact I was sitting directly across from him at the table. Wendy and Bebe were having some sort of socio-political debate over Victoria's Secret and slut-shaming, Stan and Jimmy were playing Quarters with a glass of 7-Up, and Butters was on the phone with his parents, who were quite audibly yelling at him through the speakers. Kyle had _nobody_ to talk to but me, and despite this, he still chose to play Angry Birds on his phone instead.

So I chucked a dinosaur chicken nugget at his head.

"Dude!" He looked up and shot me an Angry Look.

"Sorry, I dropped that," I said, grabbing it back off the table after it'd bounced off Kyle's hat. He made a motion to take it off to inspect for greasy damage, but terminated his action prematurely. Stan was sitting next to him, after all.

_Stan doesn't give a fuck about your hair,_ I caught myself thinking. After all, he'd already seen it a thousand times, along with the rest of us. And hell, by now, it wasn't even that bad. Kyle was just being a pussy.

"There's nothing on it, is there?" he asked, tilting his head downward and brushing off any possible chicken-residue.

"Dude, its fine," I said, before taking a swig of chocolate milk.

"No, seriously, I don't want any of that gross crap on my head," he said, motioning toward my saucer of ketchup-ranch-dressing hybrid dip.

I rolled my eyes. "Just take it off and look for yourself then," I said.

"No way. Stan, did Kenny get any shit on my hat?"

Jimmy had just sunk a quarter into their cup, sloshing a bit of its contents onto the table. Stan chugged what was left of the 7 Up as he hummed a "nuh-uh".

"Told you," I said flatly. Of course he couldn't just take _my_ word for it.

He was still glaring, but became fixed on Stan's game of quarters instead. Apparently, I wasn't going to get any further conversation out of him—

—until he turned too quickly and knocked over his drink with his elbow. With a loud clinging of silverware, the contents of the nearly-full glass flowed across the tabletop and soaked both of our pants. And judging by the bright red glow on Kyle's face, he accidentally got Stan wet too.

"Fuck, dude!" I muttered, squirming in my seat. Butters muttered something to himself before trying to hang up with his mom; his drink dominoed over too.

"H-hold on, I've got some iced tea on my pants—"

I grabbed a wad of napkins from Jimmy's side and started grating my thighs. Stan borrowed some from Wendy.

"Shit Kyle, chill out, will you?" Stan said, staring at his own Diet Dr. Pepper-soaked crotch. He wasn't angry, really, but the glowing look on Kyle's face would've made you think Stan was fucking outraged.

"I— sorry, dude," he said, stamping the wet table with napkins. They quickly turned a muddy brown color and balled up into papery chunks. They didn't help much.

"Fuck it, I'm going to the bathroom for this," I said. Thank god I didn't have to climb over anyone to get out of the booth (while I'm sure Bebe would've appreciated it, I don't think Jimmy would want my balls in his face). And I guess I motioned for a good idea, because anyone else who'd been a target for Kyle's shitty diet drink was getting up to follow me. Kyle went last, of course— like he'd really walk in front of Stan after that? Broflovski was being freakin' _ridiculous_.

I kicked myself internally for thinking it was pitifully cute.

But I quickly changed my train of thought back to my sticky Wal-Mart jeans. Which _he_ sticky-fied in the first place.

The three of us; or me, Kyle, and Stan (Butters' mom only became enraged when he interrupted her, so he was still sitting in wet slacks) made our way into the mens' room, where I kicked my right leg up on the sink countertop and pumped the soap three or four times. Stan headed to the sink to my right, and Kyle hung back against the wall, because he was too big of a pussy to stand inbetween us. The kid could take news of my immortality without a problem, but he had trouble dealing with a pissed-off Stan Marsh? I would've rolled my eyes if I hadn't just accidentally got soap in them.

"Dude. I think you got some on my ass. How the hell did you manage to get some on my _ass_?" Stan asked off-handedly, as he inspected himself in the mirror.

"Gaaaaay," I said, inbetween dunking my face into the sink to rinse out my eyes.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Kyle offered, flushed and hurriedly trying to finish wiping himself off. "It wouldn't have happened if Kenny wasn't throwing shit at me."

I spat out some water. "Okay, I threw _one_ nugget at you. Big freakin' deal," I said.

"You're poor! You're supposed to _eat_ that sort of thing!"

I wiped my hands off on a paper towel, wadded it up, and threw it at his head. "What, you want me to eat that too?"

"Dude!—"

"GUYS," Stan said, shutting off the tap with a hard motion. "Seriously! Shut the fuck up already, will you? You've been dicks to each other all weekend, and its driving me nuts!"

"It's _his_ fault!" we unintentionally said in unison. Kyle shot me a funny sort of look, but quickly turned his attention back to Stan.

"Really, Stan, I'm sorry, I've just been studying a lot lately—"

"Bullshit," I mumbled.

"See?" Kyle asked in desperation. "I can't get one word across without Kenny being a retard!"

"Look," Stan said flatly, double-checking his jeans before heading toward the door, "I really don't care. I don't know what happened since last week that made the two of you act like idiots, but I'd really rather not have to deal with it, 'kay?"

I didn't dare look over at Kyle.

"And stop acting so weird, dude," he said to Kyle (in a friendlier tone) as he opened the door. Figures.

"_I'd really rather not have to deal with it,_" I mocked in a pitch much higher than Stan's after he left. "God, it's like it's _his_ problem you're a clumsy hopeless mess."

"Seriously Kenny? Fuck off," Kyle said, tearing yet another paper towel out of the dispenser and wiping it over his pockets.

"What? I mean it. You're _obsessed_. You twitch and you freak out and you knock shit over when you're sitting next to him, and you blame _me_?"

"Yes, I blame you!" Kyle shouted. "I already have enough on my plate! I mean, between signing up for AP tests and having to deal with the fact that I may as well be a flaming homosexual, I don't want to have to deal with you and your stupid zombie-freak-of-nature thing!"

I tried to fix my now-wet bangs.

"Don't forget about attacking my face," I added sarcastically.

Kyle made a groaning sound that reminded me of a triceratops dying. "Dude. Don't even go there. I don't even want to think about that."

"It already happened. You can't _think_ it away."

"The hell I can't. Watch me."

I gave a heaving sigh. I was a little more than frustrated. "Okay. Okay. I get you. Let's rewind a bit here, yeah? I'm not _pissed_ at you for 'exploring your hormonal awakening'," I said, quoting something Mackey said earlier in the school year. "And its not like I'm going to fucking tell Stan you're gay for him. I owe you _something_ for not freaking out over me dying. So will you fucking _work_ with me at least?"

Kyle was staring at the sink, turning a paper towel over in his hand multiple times. "I . . . I think the problem is that I don't— well, _trust_ you, to be honest."

"'Scuse me?" I asked.

"No, I mean it," he said, tossing the paper in the trash. "You had a gun to your head, you blow your face off, you come back to life. Then, somehow, you end up knowing more about me than I'm comfortable with. You've already got too much crap on me, Kenny . . . I don't think I like it."

"So you call me a 'retard' and demand I eat reconstituted chicken?" I asked, taken aback. "Hell, I don't think I like that either."

I tried not to watch him, because he was being a douchefuck again, but I couldn't help it. He was already trying to make eye contact with me in the first place. _No, Kyle, I don't want your goddamn pupils staring me down. _It was stupid and invasive and he clearly hated my guts.

"Then," he started, leaning back against the wet countertop, his belt line absorbing the stray leftover puddles, "What _would_ we like?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'we'?" I looked at him for a moment before I cracked a nervous sort of smile. "I like long strolls on the beach and kittens and unicorn nipples, how about _you_ Kyle?" I asked mockingly.

He rolled his eyes. "No, dude, I'm being serious. 'What would we like', as in, where do we go from here? As in, I don't like where any of this is going, and I'd like to ignore it?"

"Ignore what? The fact that I'm not dead, or the fact that I know about Stan?"

"The fact that I kissed you."

I blinked. So he'd finally brought it up on his own accord. "Oh." I blinked again, noticing the puddley state of the sinktop twiceover, and how it was messing up Kyle's back pockets. "Well, I guess we could ignore it, but I really don't think its healthy to repress something like that," I said, half-joking.

"Do I look like I care?" he asked, finally sliding off the countertop. "Kenny, we're friends. That's all I ever want us to be, and that's all I'm ever going to _try_ to be. It was a mistake, and I said I was sorry, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever." He'd already said all that shit. I wanted to know what he was _really_ thinking. "You know, you can just tell me if you think I'm not worth your time," I said, shrugging. "I mean, I'll stop jacking around with you. You've already proven to me you're not going to leak my 'secret' or anything."

Kyle sighed. "Kenny, I didn't mean it like _that_."

"No, really," I continued. "You said you don't trust me. I'm fine with that, but I'm not going to force you to hang around me when you don't even trust me. I won't be offended, I promise," I lied.

He looked at me in a way that I wasn't used to. "But Kenny, it's not like you trust me either, right? I mean, I could run off and tell Stan or Wendy or anyone— not that they'd believe me," he trailed.

I stared at him, until he dropped his shoulders and screwed up his eyebrows. "What?" he asked.

I swallowed. "Kyle, I trust you more than anyone I know."

He looked at me, then looked back at the sink. I only now noticed that there actually _was_ a chicken stain on his hat.

"Oh," was all he said, letting it echo off the tacky green wall tiles.

It wasn't what I wanted him to say, at least.

"Kyle," I said.

"Uh-huh?"

"You seemed really upset. When I killed myself."

"Oh. Yeah, I was," he said simply.

"But . . . why would you—"

"—Just because I don't trust you doesn't mean I don't _like_ you," he interrupted, a little louder than necessary. I almost jumped.

"What?"

"I don't _not_ like you, Kenny. I've just been really—" he searched for an appropriate word,"—_confused_ lately. But I like you. I don't want you dead."

Something minute went off inside of me, like an atom splitting. If that counted as minute.

We both looked at anything other than each other, but for the first time all weekend, it wasn't out of awkwardness.

"So. Let's get out of this bathroom before they think we're blowing each other. Sound good?" he asked, and I smirked out of irony for my usual nightly fantasies.

"Yeah. Sounds good."

Kyle had a grip on the door handle with one hand, and an offering to "shake on it" with the other. "No more douchey-ness?" he asked, extending his open palm.

"No more gay passes at me," I answered, taking his hand and shaking.

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you too."

We both grinned, and he opened the door.

* * *

A/N: Hey guys, sorry this took forever to get up. Guess who has about eighty projects to finish before the end of the semester? YEAH! Thanks to everyone who reads/favs/reviews/etc.. and as usual, you guys get metaphorical baked goods of gratitude.


	6. Chapter 6

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

I watched Kyle make his way back to the table as the bathroom door swung shut against my heel. I wasn't nearly as upset coming out with wet hands as I was going in with wet knees, but somehow I doubt it was the difference in cleanliness that made me feel that way. I knew I still had some soda stains on my crotch, and I'd probably never actually get them out without borrowing someone's washing machine, but I wasn't as upset about that as I would've been. I wasn't as upset at Kyle as I was ten minutes ago.

But, then again, I wasn't happy either.

I was in a sort of crawl-space, inbetween "okay" and fantastic-feeling, but I still had a weird twinge of _something_ that kept making my stomach feel too full for its own good. And I hadn't overeaten, so I knew it wasn't the possibility that I _actually_ needed to throw up.

I chose to ignore the fact that Kyle insisted he wanted to be "friends" forever. I should've been more happy about finally being acknowledged as important in his life, or anyone's life really, but I wasn't.

So I set my sights on the Jell-O over by the salad bar. Jell-O always made everything better.

I only made it three steps forward before a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder. My "not quite happy" mood took a nose dive into the realm of "kill me now".

"What, you don't even say hi to me, Kinny? Laaame," Cartman said, not bothering to retract his hand.

I collected myself, and sighed. "Hi."

I wasn't exactly thrilled to see him— after all, I don't think he'd given up on his "Kenny Campaign" just yet. I wouldn't mind it if he murdered me and got it all over with, but I knew better. My hopelessly immortal soul would be safe; my wallet would not. I'd like to keep what little cash I have left in there.

"Ew, dude, what'd you do, piss your pants or something?" he asked, finally noticing that my bottom half was hardly tidy. I looked down myself, and noticed I had a paper towel stuck to my shoe.

"Kyle spilled shit on us. It won't really come out," I said plainly.

Cartman "pfffft"d. "Leave it to the Jewfag to ruin a good pair of jeans," he said in a way that made me think it was both a compliment and an insult rolled into a single sentence. Was that even grammatically possible?

"Yeah," I shrugged. "It's no big deal."

Cartman was following me as I changed course back towards the table. I didn't want to be stuck by the salad bar alone with him. God knows he'd kill me with a spoonful of ambrosia— not that I'd particularly mind that sort of death.

"Well, that's good to hear. It'd suck if you were pissed about it— I mean, _I_ wouldn't want to be pissed during a meal like this," he said off-handedly. _Too_ off-handedly. I raised an eyebrow.

"A 'meal like this'? What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"Well, are you going to pay me back yet?"

"Pay you back?"

"You owe me money, remember?"

I groaned. "God fucking dammit, Cartman, I don't owe you anything."

"You sure?" he asked, excitedly. It kind of creeped me out. "You sure you don't want to pay me back, Kinny? 'Cuz I'm sure you'd like to eat tonight, right?"

"Uhh, what?"

He cocked a grin. I was seriously starting to wish we were within earshot of the table.

"Dude, Kinny. There's no food at your place. Unless you want to front me for my super awesome business endeavor, I'm pretty sure this is your last meal for quite a while," he shrugged.

"Bull shit," I said. "Mom went grocery shopping last night. I've got food." Sort of. If Eggos counted.

I noticed Stan look up at us. They were already splitting the checks.

"Nah, I'm pretty sure you don't, man. And I mean, if I'm wrong, I can always go back and fix that."

My stomach lining was used to the fat anxiety ball that Cartman presented himself as, so I didn't really freak out nowadays when he had one of his weirder Third-Reich moments. But then again, I'd never really had him be so fixed on getting something out of me. Usually, he knew better— I never had cash.

"So," I blinked. "You're confiscating my food until I help you out."

"That's the idea," he said.

"Okaaay," I answered, contemplating the extent to which Cartman would drag this out. I usually went without much to eat anyway, so worst case scenario, I'd just have to improvise. It was better than him trying to knock off my head with a counterweight, I guess.

"So why me? Why not Stan or Kyle or someone?"

He leaned against the chair railing. "Do you really think I'd want to be stuck working with shits like them? No, you're much more fun to blackmail into helping me. And after all, if you died, I doubt society would care, so it's a win-win situation, you know?" He smiled, and turned to eye the macaroni salad fifteen feet to his right.

I pocketed my hands, in a dire suppression not to punch the fatwad. So that's why he didn't kill me yet? He wanted to blackmail me? Well, shit, he was doing an awful job of it. Threatening me with death was like threatening Butters with two weeks of grounding. It was inconvenient, but hell, it happened all the time. There were plenty of other things Cartman could get me for if he wanted my time and my money.

And for that matter, if he really wanted my money, why the hell didn't he come after it already?

I didn't want to admit it on Cartman's behalf, but something told me he just wanted an excuse to hang out with me again. Sniper rifle considered, he could've killed me in a heartbeat. I'm not too lucky when it comes to avoiding accidents, after all, and the wet sticky splotch on my jeans proved that. So, if he was keeping me alive, was it because of something else? Because I haven't talked to him— as a friend, or anything close to it— since eighth grade?

"Dude," I started, pushing my luck again, "Do you miss me or something?"

His eyes darted back forward, and he stared at me for a moment before he broke out a laugh. "Are you shitting me? That's the faggiest thing I've heard all day," he said smugly.

"Hey, I was just wondering. It's not like we hang out anymore."

He sighed audibly and let his arms drop to his side."Look, if it makes you feel any better, sure. Go ahead and think that. But I can guarantee you I've been too busy with bigger and better things since you three stopped wasting my time."

I tried not to smile, but I couldn't help but feel that I had things figured out. I'm a smart fucking cookie, I am. "So, you kind of have a soul after all? You're just threatening my life and my family because deep down, in that chubby disgusting gut of yours, you _care_?" I joked.

For a minute, I thought I had him pinned. He stared at me with a somewhat confused expression, taken off-guard by what I'd just suggested. I knew it. I was right. Right?

Wrong.

He kicked me in the balls, _hard_, and I went down fast, the tacky carpet coming in contact with my left cheek before I even knew what happened. "No dude, fuck that. I just want my goddamn money." He added a hit to my kidney for good measure before motioning to Butters from across the room.

"Right then. See ya, Kinny. Remember, you might wanna stash some soup crackers or something, since you won't be eating dinner for the next week," he said kindly as though nothing had happened.

I reeled in mortal pain as I watched him grab an after-dinner mint from the register and push open the hardwood double doors.

* * *

Though I really shouldn't have doubted Cartman in the first place, when I recovered from my fun day at Sizzler's and got home, there wasn't any food. At all. He'd even managed to grab the other half of my Pop-Tart that was still sitting on my desk from two weeks past. If I had to guess, the fucker even grabbed the cat food.

So, in a way, this was a slow death. It was a great way to ensure that not only did I get anything to eat, but that I'd get the brunt end of the deal when my dad got home and went apeshit over not having any tortillas. While they didn't have any food either, and Cartman promised he'd come back for a second round of looting, I didn't care whether or not my parents were stuck in starvation with me. Hell, I was sure they'd find a way to get a decent meal before I did— Dad had pellet guns, and Mom had a vagina to sell. It was a crude thought, but I was in a crude state of mind.

The next two days consisted of pocketing Hostess snacks from the convenience store, mooching off of Stan and Kyle for anything they didn't want to eat from the lunch cart, and chewing a lot of gum. I wasn't that hungry at first, and I was even a little apathetic about the situation, but seventy-one hours later, I found myself relying on endless cups of water— I was taking routine pisses every fifteen minutes. And after writing my name in the snow eight times during sixth period, I got bored.

Stan found me kicking the side of a vending machine near the boy's locker room after school.

"Dude, Kenny, just borrow money," he said, watching my second attempt at finding the sweet spot. After a particularly heavy blow, the machine spat out a can of coke. It wasn't food, but sugar was sugar.

"Don't need to," I said, popping the top. I didn't want to admit to him I'd already borrowed nine bucks from Clyde.

"But can't you go on a program or something? They have those free lunch things for families like yours, right?"

"Don't care. I've got my soda," I answered. Of course I knew about the "programs" he was talking about. I'd wholeheartedly refused to be a part of any "program" since high school started. I was self-sufficient enough in getting my own food anyway, at least until fucking Cartman decided to be a cunt about it. I wasn't "the needy" anymore.

"Well, seriously, dude. Don't die or anything," he said, leaning against the wall to switch into his athletic shoes before practice.

Yeah. Easy for Stan to say. And besides, I didn't see him offering me any help. He didn't really need to be criticizing me if he wasn't trying to help.

Why did Kyle like him so much? Yeah, Stan was a great guy, and he definitely provided me with some basis of friendship, but he tended to be distracted. Baseball, Wendy, college scholarships. There wasn't any room for Kyle, and there definitely wasn't any room for me. I mean, here he was telling me to feed myself, when the kid's been my neighbor for ten years and hasn't bothered to do a fucking thing to help me out.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't like complaining, and I don't like being selfish. My family's selfish. I, on the other hand, am a fucking angel.

A fucking _hungry_ angel.

"When you done with practice?" I asked, with the slightest hope that we'd all hit up a McDonalds or something. I needed a Value Menu.

Stan switched shoes. "Not 'til eight. Today and tomorrow," he said. "Speaking of tomorrow, Wendy's having a kickback at her place. You should go. I'd tell you to bring cash for drinks, but . . . "

He looked worried, as though he thought he'd struck a nerve. I decided to lighten the tone a bit. "No worries. Free sex for everyone should cover it, right?"

"You know what, I think I'll pass on that one Ken," he said, an awkward smile on his face. With an exaggerated motion he finished tying the knot on his right foot and stood up straight. "Cool. Well, her place at nine. Don't worry about her parents; they're in Vegas doing some anniversary thing."

"Do I ever worry?" I said.

"Not everyone's parents are as cool with alcohol as yours are," he shrugged.

Yeah. _Cool_. That was hardly the word, but whatever.

I gave him a "later" when he had to take off into the locker rooms and tried for one more "free" soda before going home.

I slept through classes the next day. I was too lightheaded to get up anyway.

* * *

By seven that night, though, I was on a fucking roll. I popped a few somethings from the medicine cabinet that I admit I shouldn't have, but it certainly did the trick in keeping my energy levels on track. After all, I was a dying animal. And as animalistic as I tended to be in my choice of substance abuse, I really just wanted to pounce on the keg Wendy had in her backyard. Not because I had any particular desire to get drunk— scratch that, I always felt like getting drunk— but because I _needed_ the heaviest, carb-iest thing I could get. I'd already raided a bag of BBQ Lays, but I still felt like I was ready to keel over any minute.

I sat, knees to chest, in one of the lawn chairs next to the rest of the guys. I carefully guarded what was left of the chips, tilting the bag upside-down and letting the crumbs cascade into my mouth in a beautiful waterfall of salt and seasoning. I could've cried. I definitely teared up out of sheer joy.

Or maybe it was the Ritalin.

Either way, I sat in that lawn chair for a damn long time, enjoying the warmth from the artificial fire pit and the cold condensation from my red cup of froth. I watched Token and Stan's game of beer pong against Craig and Clyde, neither team looking particularly versed against the other. I was fairly sure that for some of them, this was their first time playing. I'd never played either.

I became stupidly captivated, my thought processes clouded by starvation and alcohol, and I watched the game for longer than I would've been able to keep track of— I knew I'd already had a lot to drink, so what felt like a few minutes must've been a few hours.

Unless I was downing cup after cup at lightning speed. That would've been a problem, and a pretty hilarious one, at that.

Kyle's shoulders appeared next to me at some point. We didn't talk right away, but I knew he was there. Inbetween watching Craig flip off Token for sinking a few shots and staring into the fire, I stole a few peripheral glances in his direction. What I figured was the alcohol influencing my brain was what scared me, really. I liked looking at him. I liked studying how he sat, leaning sideways just slightly, with his center of gravity off-balance. I wondered how that could possibly have been comfortable for him.

"You okay Kenny?"

I nodded, unconvincingly. "Yeah. Gunna refill. Wansummore?" I asked, the latter part of my sentence sounding a lot more like a tongue-twister than words.

He hesitated, but he handed me his cup. "Only half. Mom keeps calling me to check in."

I nodded again and edged my way to the opposite side of the fire pit, pumping the keg to get an adequate amount of the cheap shit into our cups. I knew I was getting a little less manageably sober, because I'd very clearly poured more than Kyle asked for, but I didn't really care. I passed it to him anyway and took my seat.

"This is more than half," he commented, but I watched him take a drink of it anyway.

"Aren't you rebellious," I said, leaning my head back. It was a clear night with a clear sky.

"I shouldn't even be drinking beer. My blood sugar's gunna suck tonight," he said, but it didn't sound like he was complaining. He was already a little sloshed, but nothing too crazy. Not as bad as where I was heading.

"Well, I'mmnot giving you vodka, if that's what you're asking," I said.

He shifted his weight again, but he was still off-axis. It was starting to bug me. "I never said anything about vodka, Kenny. For god's sake, I'd like to wait a while before hitting the hard stuff."

"Vodka's better for diabetics. Thatsswhy I said it."

I didn't notice it right away, but Kyle was looking at me. "Oh. Well, that's good to know, I guess."

"And vodka's not 'hard stuff'," I slid out again. My head was slipping into anti-gravity.

"Not for you, maybe, but for me? Hell yeah it is dude."

Kyle was a pretty skinny guy, after all. I was too. But I easily had a few inches on him, and maybe, I was a little thicker. I never really wanted to be big or muscled-out, but whenever I had a bit of an off-day, I'd look at Kyle. I used to think it was funny, comparing myself to him to make me feel better. But now, for some reason, I didn't think it was so funny anymore. The "small" thing seemed to suit Kyle.

I didn't know how long I inspected him, but after some time, I realized it must've been _too_ long, because he was staring back at me with a weird look on his face. "You okay?" he asked me, and it took me a few seconds to say "yeah" in response.

"You talk about drinking like it's nothing," he said, breaking eye contact and staring back into the pit.

"It _is_ nothing," I shrugged.

"But Kenny, only people who do crazier stuff say that," he said. "I know you're into daredevil shit and everything, but you're not invinci—" he caught himself mid-sentence.

I felt my half-numb mouth pull into a smile.

"Okay, so that point was stupid," he sighed. "I don't know. I guess you can't permanently damage your liver if you're just going to wake up the next day in perfect health," he laughed, but it faded. He looked like he was concentrating. "What's it like to die, Kenny?"

I found myself tracing his furrowed brows with my mind, analyzing the "unknown", or the fear of the "unknown", that was surfacing on his face.

"Depends on the death," I finally said.

He exhaled sharply. "How morbid."

I sloshed my drink around a few times, swirling it in its plastic cup until a few drops spilled over the edge and onto my wrist. From across the yard, Stan and Token shared a victory yell.

"Being impaled izza bitch. So are cars and machinery, but thoserall accidents, really," I explained with lessening control over my tongue.

Kyle didn't say anything right away, but he had that _face_ again, the "thinking" one. He didn't look happy or sad or mad, but it was an expression that displayed his personality just as strikingly.

He looked up. He spoke quietly.

". . . And the gun? Was that an accident too?"

I didn't look at him. I felt my intestines desperately searching for nourishment. I took another long swallow of beer.

I couldn't look at him.

"No."

There was a silence that lasted longer than I could've possibly kept track of, because I felt like I was hanging upside-down. I couldn't tell if it was from any sort of emotion or memory or worry, or if it was because I was about to black out.

I spoke first, because I couldn't stand the conversation _hanging_ there. Dead.

"It wasn't that big of a deal," I said. "It's not like I wouldn't juss wake up again inth' morning—"

"Kenny," Kyle interrupted. His voice sounded thin. "Kenny. You can't— I don't think you should do that again," he said.

"I told you, it's no big deal—"

"_Kenny_," he said, much more loudly this time. He became aware of his volume and lowered it, but he wouldn't stop _looking_ at me, like he was nailing me to a goddamn wall.

I didn't say anything. I shut up.

"Kenny, that's _suicide_," he said, squinting. "I don't care how many times you resurrect yourself. That's— that's just _suicide_."

I closed my eyes.

"I mean, you weren't at school that day, we don't hear from you for hours, and you shoot yourself! Why would you _do_ that? Hell, for all I know, you've done it before, and I didn't even remember it!"

I didn't need a fucking lecture.

But down in my gut, I couldn't stop listening to Kyle. I didn't want him to stop talking. He was right, after all. Check, check, and check. I sat in my guilt and I hated it, but for some goddamn reason, I was clinging to every word he said. With my eyes closed, that was all that I experienced. Kyle's voice, and the crackling fire, drowning out anything else and anyone else who didn't matter.

"It's . . . it's not fair, Kenny."

I opened my eyes.

"What?"

"It's not fair."

He repeated it, and I looked over at him. His eyes were strongly framed in conviction as he spoke. "You're taking advantage of a privilege none of us will ever have. You get to die, over and over and _over_, and you get to see what happens _after_ you die, _again_ and _again_, and you don't think twice about it. You just off yourself like it's nothing?" His voice cracked. "Kenny, do you know how many people would _kill_ to know what happens after death? _How_ we die? You can't just take it for fucking granted— how is that _fair_?"

I stared at him. I expected pity. Not this.

Not _envy_.

"I'm sorry." I said it like I'd broken a window. Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not as though I was apologizing for committing suicide.

Most people would say "I'm sorry" to the victim. I was saying it to the witness.

And in the case of Cartman's brick to the head, I was saying "sorry" to the fucking _saviour_.

I felt really, really weird.

"I was worried," Kyle said, a faint conflicting smile on his face. "After I saw you pull the trigger. I didn't know where you would go, after it was all over."

Kyle didn't trust me, and he blamed me, and he envied me. But he worried about me?

I closed my eyes again. In fact, I felt _really_ weird.

"Kenny, I think I saw myself in you."

I didn't realize how close my face suddenly was to my knees until I felt the denim, soaked with something that smelled like beer, pressed against my forehead.

"Kenny?"

I was on the ground, and my cup was empty. I hadn't eaten enough. Kyle's voice repeated my name, and I blacked out.


	7. Chapter 7

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

There was a utility bucket next to my face, which was precariously hanging over the edge of a couch. A faint yellow bastard of a lightbulb, somewhere in the room, dragged my ass back to the present. I couldn't see that well— I couldn't connect to the rest of my senses, for that matter— until I leaned a slight two degrees south of where I was positioned and got a whiff of whatever was in that bucket. _God_. Acid and cheese.

A rapid impulse sent me into a violent upchuck of bile, straight into the plastic well of wonders. Though I couldn't recall a damn thing, I figured this is what I'd been doing all night. It certainly _felt_ like I'd been doing this all night.

I winced. _Was_ it still night? It was definitely dark in what I'd slowly made out to be a living room, but the digital clock on the DVD player across from me read 4:38 AM. It didn't even feel like it was the same day. It didn't even feel like I'd passed out— it felt like I'd died.

I wasn't talking about my raging migraine or chunk-filled esophagus, in a "Jesus, did I get hit by a fucking truck?" sort of way. No. I felt like I'd been _slaughtered_.

I blinked a few times, and remembered to wipe my mouth off on my sleeve. I was still at Wendy's, I noticed, though the house was completely quiet. Guess everyone else went home. I felt a moment's embarrassment for the fact that I'd burdened her loveseat with my alcohol-poisoned presence, but then I realized I didn't really give a fuck. I wasn't walking home like this. I don't think I physically _could _have.

Fortunately enough, I guess everyone else had the same idea about my well-being and dumped me on the cushions. Thank god I had a bucket— my friends weren't total dicks. I'd just have to deal with Wendy or her parents by myself in the morning. If I was still alive by then, it was no big deal.

I twisted sideways into a better position (now that I was completely devoid of any and all intestinal contents) and made myself comfortable in preparation of another hour of sleep. I hoped I'd at least be able to avoid puking again for that long; I didn't want to have to smell my own regurgitated stomach-smoothie rotting in a bucket if I could avoid it. So, bearing this in mind, I dizzily set an alarm on my cell phone, let it drop to the floor, and watched Kyle twitch in his sleep on the armchair next to me. I half-smiled before closing my eyes.

. . . And then I opened them.

"Kyle?" I choked out impulsively, before realizing that I probably shouldn't have yelled in his ear while he was sleeping. He made a funny noise and jerked in his seat, quickly staring into the darkness around us.

"Dude?" he huffed out, catching up with a moment's worth of hitched breathing.

"Hi. Sorry," I said, much more quietly.

"Jeez, Kenny, don't scare me like that," he said harshly, readjusting himself. "You just wake up?"

I nodded. "I puked. But I think I've been doing a lot of that," I said, making a mental measurement of the bucket's content.

"Yeah," he breathed. "We got you to the couch after we thought you were out for the night, but you kept it coming. Wendy made Stan clean up the first mess. Before we had the bucket, I mean."

I couldn't hold back a jackassy smirk. "Cool. I don't remember that."

Kyle shrugged. "Doubt you would. I barely remember it myself," he said. Good, so I'd gotten him drunk enough. For some reason, that was a small victory.

I grabbed the plastic rim and gave the bucket a shake. There wasn't a whole lot of food in my vomit— Stan really shouldn't have had that much to clean up. I mentally called him a pussy, but then I felt a vague upset in my abdomen, and I decided it would be best to put the bucket back down on the floor. I was kind of a pussy too, at the moment.

"You okay?" Kyle asked, much more at ease, now that I'd set it down. It really did smell like shit.

I rolled onto my back. "No," I said truthfully. I was still buzzed, but I was painfully sobering up with every ticking second of Wendy's tacky pinecone wall clock. "I'm surprised I'm still alive. I think that bag of Lays saved me."

Kyle turned sideways. "You shouldn't have had so much to drink," he said.

"You should've fed me," I countered, slightly annoyed. "I swear, I haven't eaten a full meal since Tuesday." Kyle had no right putting shame to my actions when my "friends" wouldn't even spare lunch money for me. Granted, yeah, I probably wouldn't pay them back, but that was out of circumstance, not intention. If I had the money, I'd give them every last damn dollar I owed them.

Kyle stared me down.

"What?" I asked, tipping my head backwards to get a look at him.

"You never asked me for help," he said simply. "I thought you were all 'I-Don't-Need-Your-Charity' since last year."

A part of me groaned at the idea that Kyle had paid attention to that.

"Dude, that was when I actually had cash leftover from working the ranch," I said. "And besides, that was before the Fatass was trying to murder me."

Kyle sighed. I realized I was being contradictory, that yes, I _did_ want independence for the first time in my life, but the selfish part of me wanted to kick him in the balls for giving it to me at the wrong time. For what I thought was him ignoring me.

I wanted _some_ attention, dammit.

And now that he was giving it to me, even in the most minute of ways, I didn't know how I felt about it. There were still a lot of things about Kyle that I didn't get— for some reason, I thought I knew him better _before_ I killed myself than I did now.

Now, he was just being fucking confusing.

"So, can I help you now or not?" Kyle asked drowsily. Though he was more alert than I was, he still looked like hungover shit. I wondered why he'd slept next to me in the first place.

"Yeah," I finally decided. "Just promise me you won't tell anyone I begged for it," I said with a hint of a smile, though I was being pretty serious. I didn't want that sort of reputation.

Kyle picked up his jacket, which he'd been using as a blanket, and stuck an arm in. "That some sort of innuendo?"

"Dude, Kyle. I'm being serious."

"Relax, I'm just kidding," he said as he zipped up his front. I vaguely wondered why he was dressing himself, until—

"Come on," Kyle motioned to me. I looked at him, and then I looked at the kitchen. And then I looked at him again.

"What?" I asked. "Just make me a sandwich or something. What are _you_ thinking?"

"Let's go get some breakfast. I've got Wendy's keys; we can take her car."

I stared at him dumbly. I knew I was still drunk, even if it was only by a little bit, but I _knew_ Kyle didn't just say what I thought he said.

"No, really. _What_?" I asked, scanning his face for any sign of hidden sarcasm. Other than his sharp green stare and his slightly cocked grin, I couldn't find anything that made me doubt him. "Okay Kyle. You're clearly intoxicated— here, sit back down."

"Kenny, I'm being serious. And _no_, I'm sober. I know my limits," he said with raised eyebrows. Surely he wasn't suggesting I _didn't_—

An impulse shot through my abdomen, and I quickly grabbed the bucket and leaned over to puke out a bit of incriminating proof that, okay, maybe I _didn't_ know my limits after all.

"Yeah. You're sick. You need food," he insisted again.

I spat out a remainder of gunk. "Just grab something from the pantry, _really_. You can't even drive yet— and where the hell did you get Wendy's keys from?"

"She gave them to me to hold on to earlier. She said she couldn't trust herself when she was drinking," he said, shrugging. "It's not like I _stole_ them. Besides, me and Stan take his dad's car all the time. We ask."

I verified that I wasn't going to puke again, and I sat up. "Leave it to you to make something that sounds so bad-ass into something almost-legal."

"Hey, legality is a Broflovski family issue," he said in an entirely serious way. I swear, sometimes Kyle was such a nerd.

A nerd who was going to take me out to eat.

My pulse tripped, but it could've been from the whole physical-deterioration thing.

"Fine. Just don't kill us. I'll come back, but you won't."

"How do you know I won't? What if I'm immortal and I don't even know it?" he asked jokingly as he helped me stand up. I'll admit, it was a hard thing to do.

"Don't test it," I said. "I don't want your death hanging over my head."

He glanced at me from under my arm, which was currently slung over his shoulders. "Why? I've already got your life hanging over mine," he said, in a way that sounded almost _too_ sincere. I forced myself to brush it off.

"Come on. Hobble faster, before Wendy hears us," he whispered as we passed the stairs.

It wasn't until we were outside, on the landing, that I realized Kyle was yet again keeping me alive. Only this time, he didn't take me to the hospital, even when I'd passed out last night.

He remembered not to this time.

* * *

Thankfully for me and my ever-present threat of falling over at any given moment, Kyle's idea of "breakfast" was a hearty meal of 7-11 snack foods. Normally, I would've gone for the microwaveable burritos on first instinct, but I played it safe due to my necessity of Bucket-ing and stuck with mexican bread and chocolate milk. Kyle bought them both for me.

We sat in Wendy's sedan and didn't really talk about too much. I was slowly regaining conscious thought (and regular blood circulation, for that matter) and would've finished my food in record timing if I didn't have to monitor my digestive tract after every bite. But right then, eating that stale piece of sugary bliss, I was at the highest point I'd been all week.

"You're really going to try to stomach milk?" Kyle asked with an eyebrow raised. The car windows were rolled up and we had the heater on low, making the windshield impossible to see out of and the lighting lower than it needed to be. It was perfect for my hangover; not so much for sitting in a tight space with another boy.

I shook the paper carton and opened it from the "wrong" end. "Yup."

He watched with an alarmed sort of curiosity as I took a swig and held it in my mouth for suspense's sake. I swear, he was holding his breath waiting for me to regurgitate the entire mouthful all over Wendy's dashboard.

I swallowed it without any trouble. "Did I scare you for a second there?"

He sank back into his seat. "I just don't want to bring her car back to her filled with your insides," he said.

"I'm not going to vomit out my 'insides', dude. Unless you cut me open right now and all my guts slip out, I promise you, no nasty shit on the leather."

Kyle barely winced, just enough that I noticed it, before taking a bite of a corn dog. "Gross."

"My guts or the corn dog?" I asked, chancing another drink of milk.

"Both," he said with a smile. His teeth grated the crusty exterior of his food. He was eating it sideways, like corn, and not like a dick. I couldn't make fun of him.

The car's engine hummed warmly, not at all like my dad's truck, and didn't drown out the radio at all. Freddy Mercury was singing the usual ballad intro to Bohemian Rhapsody.

"I hope this doesn't become a common occurrence," Kyle said inbetween bites. "If Wendy keeps having parties in her backyard like that, I have a feeling we'll end up here in this parking lot a lot more than we need to."

"'Snot a bad thing," I commented. "You're not the worst person in the world to share alcohol poisoning with."

He smiled calmly as he fiddled with the keys. "Neither are you. But getting food like this every weekend will really take a chunk out of my wallet," he joked, referencing all four dollars and fifty-six cents he'd spent inside.

"Yeah? Every weekend? I'm not going to keep myself starved like this if I can avoid it. Get me food and I'm good to go for parties," I said, before pulling up on the seat lever and letting myself drop back a few clicks.

"But, I mean, what if?" Kyle posed. "What if you don't? It's been a week already and you haven't been able to scrape up money for lunch," he said in a way that was anything but comforting.

I shrugged, staring up at the upholstered interior. "I'll get it together. I'll pay you back eventually, if that's what you mean."

The song on the radio abruptly switched into staccato piano chords and lyrics that were an ironic description of my life. I swear, Queen had conspired against me years before I was even born.

Kyle wasn't paying attention to the radio. "No, what I mean is— well, I don't think you're doing much to prevent yourself from dying." If he'd said it with any concern on his face, I might've responded better, but he didn't.

I sat up. "Are you kidding me, dude?"

"Look, you already admitted you killed yourself on purpose! I'm just pointing out the obvious conclusion here—"

"— I _know_ how to take care of myself, Kyle, I'm not going to let myself starve—" I said, before having to pause and backtrack. "Wait. Hold up. I admitted _what_?"

He cocked his head. "Last night, you said you shot yourself on purpose. You know, when we were hanging out by the fire pit? On _purpose_, Kenny."

He was suddenly my math homework— I had no clue what he was talking about."What?"

"Dude. Don't be stupid."

I made a face and further unwrapped my pan bread. "I don't think I remember doing that." Because I didn't.

"You don't?"

I shook my head as I swallowed a particularly large bite to unclog my tightening throat. I didn't need a preacher.

"Seriously? Were you _that_ hammered?"

And then something inside of me punched my arteries.

I jerked my arm and my hand and my food down and away from my face in a movement that ripped through the air. I squinted at Kyle. "Dude. _Fuck_. Of course I was '_that_ hammered', Kyle, I was _hungry_! Excuse me for having a shitty week, but _god_, does it _have_ to be your fucking job to police everything I do? Sorry if I don't remember anything!" I rotated toward him in my seat. "And, okay, let's say I told you I meant to off myself; does that give you _any_ freaking right to blame me for it? Like I'm not ashamed of it already? Jesus Christ, Kyle, what's your problem?"

I caught my breath, which was no longer visible now that the heat had been turned on, and locked my heated glare onto Kyle's line of sight. We did this sort of staring contest where neither of us dared let go of the other's attention, for what felt like minutes until he finally broke first and turned his head away from me.

_Galileo! Galileo! Galileo Figaro! MAGNIFICO!_

"I tried it once," he said quietly. I had to turn down the volume.

"What?" I asked, still glaring.

He didn't look up from his lap. "I tried it once. But not with a gun," he said, breathing. "With one of my dad's prescriptions. I took a lot."

I could've carved him hollow with my stare.

"You . . . what?"

"I ended up sick, Kenny. That's all. Obviously I'm not dead," he said with a tiny smile that didn't match the tiny crack in his voice. "You have it easy, I guess."

I scanned his face for any sign of shitty sardonic humor, but I couldn't find any. Was he being serious?

"Dude. Kyle. _What_? When?" I didn't believe him.

He picked at the inside of his eyelids where the crust usually is before he said anything. I don't think there was anything there, but he wiped his hand on his pants and left a microscopic dark spot in its place. No, dude, he wasn't—

"When I didn't go on that field trip to the geological center that you guys all said was crap."

— tearing up?

No. Fuck this. Kyle was supposed to be stable. Kyle was supposed to be the kid who _wasn't_ fucked up.

"It was no big deal, I mean, I'm fine and all," he said in the same voice I used when I was bullshitting.

"Kyle. No, seriously. Don't fuck around with this like its nothing. You better not be joking." But as soon as I'd said it, I wanted to reach out with my tongue and lick the words back up into my mouth. They didn't sound right.

And Kyle _knew_ they didn't sound right, because he turned, and finally looked at me. I couldn't describe the look he gave me if I had a thousand years to come up with a word for it. "I was able to watch you die, and watch you live, all in the same day, and I believed your story. And I say that I'm _human_, and you discredit me?"

"I know. I didn't mean to say that."

"Kenny, I saw you pull off what I called myself _crazy_ for wanting, and I was more horrified by what I saw than impressed— don't you think I know what I'm talking about now? Don't you think I'm scared _shitless_ of seeing that happen to you again?"

I didn't want to notice the tendons in his forearms or the tight wrinkles around his wrist pressing up against the leather seating, but I did. I didn't want to see them shaking as involuntarily as they were either, but I did. My heart sunk.

I knew why Kyle didn't trust me.

"No. I think you're scared shitless of seeing it happen to _you_," I said gently. "You're scared of dying now, aren't you? You're scared to try it again."

He snorted some loose congestion.

"But why, Kyle? Why the hell would you try something like that in the first place? You're not unhappy; I mean you've got a good family and good grades and stuff, right?"

He nodded, but then he leaned forward, until his forehead rested against the steering wheel and his hat tipped slightly up and off. I felt like I needed to put my hand on his shoulder, so I did.

It could have been ecstasy for me, the feeling of Kyle's thin clavicle against my palm for the first time, but it wasn't. I didn't allow it to be anything but sympathetic—and for now, that was all it needed to be.

"I . . . told Ike. About Stan," he started, almost tangling the words as he spoke downward. "And he didn't know I hadn't told Mom yet." I felt his breathing stagger. "It wasn't Ike's fault. I should've said something. Not to tell, you know . . . he brought it up to her by accident. Not on purpose."

God. The worst part was I needed to throw up again, but I wouldn't. I couldn't. I held it in.

"So she freaked? What happened?"

He shook his head again, and I suddenly noticed a few fresh dark droplets appear on his jeans. "No. She ignored it for a while. But she told Dad. And then when I actually got the balls to ask her about it, after Ike apologized—" he sniffed loudly.

"Yeah?"

"She said it was okay. She didn't have a gay son. Her son wasn't gay, and he certainly didn't have a crush on his best friend," he said, his voice jumping pitches. "So I had 'nothing to worry about'—"

I realized my hand was clamped down harder than it needed to be. "So you _kill_ yourself? Kyle, come on, don't be like that— why didn't you talk to one of us? Why didn't you talk to me?"

He smiled in contradiction again. "Hell, Kenny, if I would've known you died on a regular basis, I think that would've made things even worse." He glanced sideways at me. "I already said I envy you. I don't think I could ever go through with dying, and you make it look like this great, awesome superpower from hell . . . "

"It's not," I said affirmatively. "Trust me, it's not. But you _can't_ base your life on your mom's approval, dude. That's _stupid_."

He finally sat up, and leaned back into his seat. I let my hand drop.

"What else am I supposed to do? Everything I do is to live up to their standards— I'm their only son, biologically. I get good grades. I'm the president of two clubs. What more am I supposed to do? Without being fucking _perfect_, who am I?"

"A diabetic Daywalker with a tight ass," I said, before speaking much more seriously. "And, you're my friend. My good friend, Kyle."

He offered a weak, but still present smile, before wiping his eyes free of salt water. "Yeah. I am."

The hitched breathing slowed to a steady pace, and after a moment or two, everything was quiet except for the low murmur of the radio.

"Kenny?"

I turned. "Yeah?"

I watched as Kyle blinked twice before saying anything again. "You wouldn't . . . mind, would you?"

And then I noticed how precariously close our hands were, now that mine was hovering around the Automatic shift and the cupholders, and how Kyle was staring at the distance with the need to simply have contact. I knew that feeling. I'd _felt_ that feeling.

I nodded. His hand was colder than mine; neither of us remembered where our gloves were the night before, but the press of skin against skin was more than enough to manage. It wasn't a romantic act, I knew— it was what I would've wanted if I had to admit everything like he had, which I certainly wasn't ready to do. It was an act of closing the gap between not knowing anything and knowing _everything_ about Kyle Broflovski, and it was something that might've saved my life the last time I had a hand gun in my grip.

It was a moment I didn't want to acknowledge as a trigger for wanting him as anything more than a friend.

But it was. And I knew I'd regret it.

* * *

A/N: Last stretch of finals and then I'm off for summer vacation. Wheee! Thanks again to everyone, this is turning out to be a really fun thing to write.


	8. Chapter 8

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

My internal wake-up call left me staring at the ceiling of my bedroom much earlier than I wanted to. I never used an alarm clock anymore, at least not at home. Mine made this stupid screeching noise that usually woke the rest of the house up anyway, and I didn't enjoy having Dad and Kevin beat the shit out of me when the alarm went off at six-thirty in the morning. Instead, I'd started to rely on my body's natural patterns— after all, I was so used to my phoenix-like reawakenings, the "morning after" jump-start of my freshly unharmed internal organs, that I usually woke up in time for school anyway. I died so often that I just kind of got used to it.

But today was a rarity. Today, I woke up _before_ six-thirty; it was a good hour and a half until I would've even _considered_ getting up. For some reason, my eyes had decided that sleep wasn't necessary, and my brain switched into AWARENESS mode before I even had to outrun the velociraptors in my previous nightmare. I didn't even get to _touch_ a goddamn dream-dinosaur. I was wide awake.

In all honesty, I knew why. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night, and it only made sense that I'd have a hard time _staying_ asleep until sunrise. Today was Monday. Aside from the impending doom of class and the crappy nagging feeling that keeps you awake (when you _know _you've only got two more hours to lay in a coma), I had a million things to think about.

Kyle was nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand of those things.

The other thousand was counted in milligrams, in a plastic prescription bottle on my nightstand.

I exhaled. My stash was just for kicks, and occasionally, extra energy. I never considered them to be anything but supplemental to my teenaged experimental antics— fun, fast, and an easy high. I mean, hell, I'd tweaked off of cat piss before; nothing was that intimidating to me by now. But knowing that Kyle had actually intended otherwise, that he _wanted_ the most permanent side effect listed on any pharmaceutical warning . . . it scared me. I hated myself for never knowing that about him, and I hated myself even more for coming and going through hell and earth as I pleased. I could come back. I'd always come back.

He wouldn't.

And even though I'd had my down times, even though I'd done a few stupid suicidal things before, I knew it'd never be permanent. I'd already tried that. I'd tried a thousand times to see if the outcome of dying was any different, but it never was. I couldn't die.

It was something I didn't like thinking about. I was trapped in an endless cycle of purgatory; my own shitty emotions only led to wanting death to come faster. I could try to speed up the process. I could shoot myself a thousand times, by myself or in front of everyone in the universe, but I'd always end up where I started.

Kyle might've envied me. But in the end, when it really came down to it, I wanted what he had. I wanted one turn, one precariously threatened life.

I wanted impermanence.

* * *

Four hours later, though, I was still as permanent as my school record, which was currently being reviewed by the Vice Principal for showing up to school faded again. It was hard not to smile around her, since she really took this sort of shit seriously, but my occasional smirk already made me a lost cause. I wouldn't have even been sitting in the chair across from her desk if it wasn't for fucking Clyde, who pointed out my rather poignant earthy scent in homeroom. I didn't have anything on me, thank god, so after my record was cleared and I got a few "words of wisdom" about the benefits of staying sober, I could kick his ass freely.

"Alright, Mr. McCormick, it looks like there's nothing we can really do here, so," the vice principal sighed as she curtly restacked the file in front of her. I really hated it when adults addressed us like other adults. I wasn't _Mr._ McCormick. I wasn't _Mr._ Anything.

"Can I take off?"

"Yes, well, I guess that's it, right? You may return to class. Just remember to sign in for OSI after your last period," she said. OSI was the school's douchebaggy word for "on-site intervention", which was really just detention. I think they enjoyed making it sound like I had issues.

Little did they know, right?

I got up and readjusted my hood before she interrupted my leaving. I was _so_ close to the door, too.

"Excuse me for asking, Kenneth, but don't you have any hobbies? Anything to keep you busy other than what you're doing now? I hate to see you in my office so often; I mean, we have plenty of clubs—"

I cracked a grin. Hobbies? What did she think I was, a social outcast? Of course I had hobbies. One was called "Avoid the Bullets". Another was "Shovel the Driveway". And I had plenty of Maxims to occupy my time.

"With all due respect, ma'am, I'd rather spend my time off-campus," I said simply, negating to tell her that I even had a thing for opera, lest she dump me in the glee club.

"I'm just afraid you're neglecting your education, that's all," she continued. "There are better ways to spend your time, I'm _sure_." She swiveled slightly to the left and slid open a drawer, dropping my file back into the bottom. "Though, I hear your grades have been improving a bit. Have you been proactive, or is this just a fluke?"

I fidgeted with my zipper. I really wanted to get out of here already. "Kyle Broflovski's been tutoring me, if that's what you mean," I shrugged.

"Oh?" she raised an eyebrow. "Well then you certainly found a good source for help. The last time we checked, he's in the top three of your class, if I remember correctly."

"He's in the second spot," I corrected her. For some reason, it really annoyed me that she didn't know this for a fact. Kyle mentioned it before.

She leaned back in her seat and looked at me funny. "You pay attention." It wasn't a question.

"More people should," I said simply.

I tried to ignore it, but it was very evident that she was studying me. _Bitch, I'm not that surprising. _It's not like I didn't have good traits.

I blinked. "So . . . can I leave?"

She took a moment to answer, but yes, she nodded yes, and motioned me out of her cavern of doom. Thank god; I was ready to have a normal, relaxing day filled with ignoring lectures and doodling on my tests.

Of course, like always, I spoke too soon.

Fast-forward the TiVo of my contradictory life to the moment I'd gripped the homeroom door handle. The bell rang, and classes mushed their way into the hall for passing period. Because of that goddamn meeting with the vice principal, I'd missed all of my first class. Of course, this normally wasn't a bad thing at all.

No.

Something else was going to be much, much worse. What was bad and horrible and a disgustingly ridiculous kick in the balls was what happened when my locker opened. Something didn't belong.

Kyle and me.

A crystal-clear photograph, slid into the metal slats, that depicted what was surely a downward spiral into eternal social hell. I stared at it.

Kyle and me.

The defrosted windows evident of being parked with the engine running for longer than ten minutes, the obnoxious glow of the fluorescent 7-Eleven storefront reflecting off the hood, the empty food wrappers left to temporarily decay on the dashboard inside the car. A perfectly framed moment of awkward intimacy that should never have left the parking lot at five in the morning.

If I didn't know the stigma behind the photo, if I didn't know I'd been keeping Kyle from falling to emotional shards, I would've called it the faggiest photo I'd ever seen.

I got as close to panicking as my THC-laden brain receptors would let me.

"Dude. You okay?" I heard Stan ask, somewhere from my right.

I flipped the photo over, and then over again, and then looked up.

"What's that? Something happen?" he asked again, his line of sight flicking down towards the photograph. I slipped it back into my locker in a very obvious way.

"Nothing." I said it really, _really_ quickly. "No."

He looked thoroughly unconvinced, but reached up to stuff his algebra book into his locker. "Damn, Kenny, don't trip. I was just asking."

I nodded as I swung the aluminum door shut. _Locked_ shut.

I finally remembered to breathe. Where the _fuck _did that photo come from? Who else had it?

I scanned the sea of students for any sign of an ushanka. When I spotted him from across the hall, I caught a quick confirmation of my worst fear; Kyle's expression hitched as he studied something that fell out of his locker. He glanced up in a quick motion, and through the passing crowd his eyes clicked onto my own. Our mutual stare confirmed it; we had the same photo in our lockers, and I could only assume my face was as red as his was.

"Kenny? You okay?" Stan asked again, because Stan was a nice guy.

I didn't move. I didn't look at him. I just mentally repeated the words on the back of the photo again and again— _"To be emailed, Sophomore class. Midnight, tonight"_.

I— _we, _or Kyle and my pathetically reactive self— were well on the way to being fucked, and I suddenly realized that I knew _damn_ well who the fucker was.

* * *

A string of text messages and six classes later, I'd skipped detention in favor of convening with Kyle at his house. This was more important than sitting in an empty room for an hour anyway, and if it meant having to meet with the vice principal yet again, then I decided I could accept that fate. My own personal upset and intrigue over the Holy-Shit-We're-Gay-In-A-Car photo left me jumping in my seat until the final bell rang, and there was no way Kyle and I weren't getting to the bottom of the situation today. If someone was watching us then, then creepy-God in heaven knows we were being watched at every hour.

Only one person was that dedicated to stalking us for personal gain. Normally, I wasn't afraid of his "threats", albeit I was a bit paranoid at times, but now that Kyle was dragged into what was surely blackmail? This went beyond physical torture— the possibility of anyone finding out about Kyle and me would mean certain reputational death.

"But there _is_ no 'you and me'," Kyle reasoned as he threw his backpack aside in his room. Two books, a worn binder, and one of Cartman's old pamphlets spilled out sideways. "I mean, sure, that photo's pretty incriminating, but it's not like we were _doing_ anything," he said.

"Doesn't matter," I answered, as I quickly took monopoly over his bedspace and plopped down backwards. "It's kinda funny though. No matter which way you look at it, we look gay for each other."

"We're not _gay_ for each other, Kenny."

"No," I said, rolling onto my stomach, "But you _are_ gay for Stan. So it's kinda ironic. Right situation, wrong ding-dong."

He threw me a dirty look. "I thought you took this seriously," he said, pulling out his desk chair. "How'd you feel if you were outed to the entire sophomore class through Yahoo Mail?"

"I'd feel fine," I answered in an almost-truth. "Okay, so the idea of you-and-me is really weird and probably gross to a lot of people, but the worst-case scenario? I roll me a good one, light up, and keep going on with my life."

"What happened to panicking? What happened to being upset about this?" he asked. I could've laughed; he was clearly uncomfortable. I was too, but at least being away from school made things easier.

"Do you want me to panic?" I asked. "Look, I'm just worried that Cartman's going to spread shit about you that doesn't need to be spread. It's definitely a blow aimed at me. Just his latest attempt at harassment, that's all."

"Mhmm," Kyle hummed flatly as he opened his Macbook. He was facing me; I couldn't see what he was doing, but he was furiously typing away as soon as he'd settled himself.

I occupied myself by flipping open Kyle's binder. Notes, pages of notes. World history.

"What _I_ want to know is why we didn't see him take the freakin' thing," I said absentmindedly, in reference to the photo again. "It's not hard to miss someone that chunkalicious, 'specially when they're standing in front of the car."

Kyle gave a furrowed look as he stared at his screen, and then, for some reason, he smiled. "You know what Ken? I don't think he took it at all."

I looked up. "What?"

He spun his laptop around on his knees, so I could see the satellite street-view of the same 7-Eleven on Google Maps.

"'Kay. Google. Cool. What's your point?" I asked.

"We parked in front of the window, not the door. The _cashier's_ window, Kenny. Cartman didn't take the photo, the _cashier_ did."

I squinted at the computer screen, but it looked like Kyle was closer to being right than I ever would've been. "I'll be damned, Sherlock. The fucker paid off the cashier."

I shook my head in entertained disbelief, but it made sense. It was very like Cartman to leave it to the blue-collar knockoffs to do his work for him. I only felt bad that Kyle got mixed up in it all with me.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten so sloshed that night.

I flipped another page in Kyle's binder. The incriminating evidence, the photo itself, was stuffed in the pocket of a page divider. I stared at my own outline, closer to Kyle's than it ever should have been, and realized that even now, I didn't remember much of what happened that night. I was almost disappointed.

I put the photo back in the pocket, my vision trailing to the business pamphlet on the floor. Cartman must've printed thousands of them. Cartman probably—

—And then, whatever train of thought I had going careened to a stop. I squinted, just slightly, as I double-checked my logic.

Cartman . . . he couldn't have . . .

"Hey, Kyle?"

He looked up from his computer again in response.

"I just . . . how did Cartman know we'd be there in the first place?"

Kyle's expression didn't change as he stared at me. He took longer to answer than he should've.

And then he glanced back down at his laptop in one swift movement. "Dude, I don't know. He's Cartman. He's like that."

My chest tightened. I could feel it.

"No. Kyle. _How_ did he _know_?"

"I don't know, Kenny," he said more assertively, not bothering to look up this time.

I was shaking my head in disbelief. His body language, his tone, was confirming it for me.

"How did he pay off the cashier, Kyle? _That_ cashier, on _that_ shift, at _that_ particular store?—"

"—I told you, Kenny, I—"

"—at _that_ window, after you _conveniently_ had Wendy's car for the night—"

"—don't know! Kenny!—"

"I mean, doesn't it all sound a _little_ freakin' fishy to you, Kyle?—"

"Kenny! Will you _SHUT UP_!" Kyle finished loudly, stopping me mid-sentence. He glared at me so strongly I froze, utterly surprised. "Just drop it, okay?"

I eyed him carefully, but something inside of me went off like a warning siren. "Kyle. Tell me."

He screwed up his eyebrows as he insisted on focusing on his Macbook. It took him a minute. "He told me to, okay? Cartman told me to be there at _that_ time and place. End of story."

I caught my breath as I stared him down.

No.

Kyle didn't.

"He told you to," I repeated, making sure I'd heard right. "He told you to show up, and you did?"

Kyle vehemently refused to make eye contact with me. The animalistic urge to smack his laptop out of his hands came over me, but I held back for monetary reasons.

"Yeah. He— I did."

I shook my head. No way. He wasn't _allowed_ to be a part of what happened; he wasn't _allowed_ to be a motherfucking _aid_ in it all. Not in my fucking world.

"I can't believe it," I said quietly, the shadow of a smirk on my face. "You. Really? You _knew _he was up to shit, and you _helped_?"

"I didn't _help_—"

"Bullshit! What, were you setting me up for something?"

"Will you _let_ me _talk_!"

"No way!" I said, almost laughing. "No! You don't get to talk. You get to _explain_," I shouted. "Go, tell me, what else did you fucking help him with?"

Kyle didn't move, not one muscle or twitching eyelid, until he finally shut his laptop and placed it carefully back onto his desk. He was still staring at the negative space it had just inhabited, though. Straight down at the carpeting.

"I left out a part. The other night, I mean. I . . . didn't want to tell you about it."

I was impatient, and this didn't sound relevant.

"Cartman was the first to know. About Stan. Everything else after that was just icing on the damn cake."

"You told him?"

"Hell no I didn't!" Kyle said, looking up at me for the first time. I didn't let his expression get to me. "I don't know how the fuck he works his freaky ways, but long story short, he found out, and I didn't know what to do, okay?"

I didn't relent. I wanted, so badly, to be able to soften myself up, to be sympathetic, but I was still in shock. And I was _pissed_.

"So what, fast-forward, what does this have to do with me?"

Kyle gave me a scornful glance and shook his head. "Seriously? Everything, Kenny. Normally I wouldn't let something like that get to me, you know? It's just _Cartman_. But he promised me he'd make sure my family knew, and that everyone at school would know, and—god, I don't fucking know. So I asked him what he wanted in exchange for reticence . . . "

"And?"

He met my face with hesitation. "He wanted help with _you_. With 'fucking you over', in his words. I thought he was kidding, at first."

I groaned. "Of course he'd want that."

"But he wasn't. Not one bit."

Kyle shuffled in his seat, but I stayed standing. "Kyle, you were in that photo too."

He exhaled sharply, in what could've been a laugh. "Yeah, well, I didn't exactly figure he'd be painting our homosexual portraits there, now did I? I didn't know what the hell he would do, to be honest."

I soaked in his words, and let my palm come roughly into contact with the edge of his desk. I was nearly standing over him. "What the fuck, Kyle? You didn't know what he would do, but you still drop me there like a freakin' sitting duck? What's wrong with you? What about all the other times you, quote, 'fucked me over'? Huh? What did I _ever_ do to you, as a friend, to have you stand by while I'm nearly _murdered_ on a bi-weekly basis?"

He raised his eyes, which were at a precariously close angle to my own, and he narrowed them. I wasn't sure whose hot leftover breath I was breathing in at this point.

"I never tried to stop him. After all, you're invincible, right?"

I suddenly knew why Kyle hadn't helped me dodge my own inevitable deaths until I asked for it.

"You're kidding. You think it's that easy? Kill me off and away I go?"

"I wanted to see you die again," he choked out, softly yet more serrated than anything I'd ever heard him say. "I wanted to see you die and come back again. Just to make sure I'm not completely out of my mind. You haven't died since, have you?"

I swallowed my words, because he was right. I took a moment to regain my composure.

"You say that, but you get angry at me for the gun incident? For 'not trying hard enough' to keep myself alive?"

He shook his head, and had to look away for a moment. He came back with a smirk. "Kenny, you're everything I'm not. I don't want you dead by your own hand. I don't want you to be as stupid as I can be. I want you to fucking go to hell and back by nature, not by suicide. But I still want validation; I can't help that. I'm human. I'm _logical_. And this— you, you defy all the fucking logic I ever had," he said as quietly as he could, because someone walked past his closed door.

I stared him down with everything I had. I couldn't help it. I suddenly hated him, and for some reason I still trusted him. I wanted to hit him, slam him into a _wall_, and yet I wanted to make sure no one ever got to his goddamn confused mind ever again, including himself. I didn't understand at all.

"You've been lying to me for weeks," I said, trying to will myself into a grudge— _anything_ to keep me from forgiving him for working with _Cartman_.

"You've been lying to me for _years_," Kyle countered. "Come on, have we _ever_ been honest with each other? Really?"

I smiled to myself. No, we hadn't. Now that we weren't eight years old anymore, a lot of things went unsaid. There was no honesty whatsoever, not with us, and not with any of the adults in South Park. With anyone in the _world_.

I looked at him, and saw my sentiments reflected in his face. We could be open. We could stop putting up fronts, right here, right now.

"Well, then, let me be the first."

I didn't care if it wasn't well-received. I didn't care what his reaction would be. I just knew that if I died a minute from then, whether from Cartman, or Kyle's blackmailed sense of allegiance, or another force entirely, every wall that had been broken down over the last month would be lost to the oblivion that accompanied my deaths. I knew that if I didn't act on impulse, and didn't press my lips against Kyle's at that very moment, it might've been lost.

So I did it. I grabbed at skin and jaw, and pulled him in and upwards, until his mouth was conjoined with my own and every ounce of disgust with Kyle's actions melted into hot saliva. I did it because I was angry and horny and afraid, and Kyle only reciprocated the action out of surprise— this I knew. Kyle did not love me. I did not love Kyle. But I _needed_ him, and whatever word could've described a hunger stronger than "love" would have been appropriate.

I pulled away first. And then there was silence.

"You owed me," I finally said, needing to make a joke out of it before I threw up from nerves. "For aiding in attempted homicide."

His face was still warm. He looked as though he was running numbers in his head— he did that a lot during class. But he never broke eye contact.

When he spoke, he spoke naturally. "Go home, Ken." But he smiled a bit.

I gave a laugh. I had to. I didn't know how to interpret his response. "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Can't wait for that email to be sent out."

He nodded, not looking at me. "We'll hold hands."

"Duh."

I slung my backpack over my shoulder, thinking about how funny it was that an hour ago, we would've been kidding about that last part. I wasn't sure if we still were.

At 11:57 pm, a forwarded message with one photo attachment was sent out to the entire school body from an anonymously hosted address.

Kyle had done it before Cartman.


	9. Chapter 9

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

The next morning's walk to the bus stop wasn't as kind to me as I expected. Though my morning wasn't particularly out of whack (at least, for once, I could find two almost-matching black socks in the laundry pile), I woke up knowing that today would be a pretty funny day. After all, I'd have to greet a good hundred faces that all saw my sensitive side via Firefox— I still didn't know what to make of it. Kyle didn't want the photo to be released, so why did he send it? Why would he put himself up to something like that? Granted, it _did_ make Cartman look like a dumbass for emailing the same file just four minutes later; like the rest of us hadn't already seen it.

Like the rest of the _world_ hadn't already seen it.

But I had my doubts. Of course, _I_ didn't particularly give a crap about it. I was practically a sexual deviant as it was, and fuck me in the ass if everyone in town didn't already know that. I wasn't worried about my family or my reputation or anything, because I didn't really have much of either to begin with. I realized that in a way, I was oddly free— much more free than Kyle could ever be. Though I was still kind of upset with him for being stupid and falling victim to Cartman's extortionary expertise, a part of me _almost_ forgave him. I couldn't sympathize with the fact that he was worried about his self-image, but at least I could understand it.

In an ironic way, I kind of had more to be grateful for than he did. My shitty house, and my shitty parents, and my shitty grades. I had no standards to live up to. I could be whatever I wanted to be.

Except maybe a doctor. That was ruled out in middle school after I severed one of my fingers from my hand with a scalpel in art class. I got to watch it float around in a milk carton on the way to the E.R., since they didn't have any ice. It was pretty cool, actually.

What wasn't cool, though, was what happened when I saw the Jew-bagel standing at the bus stop before I got there. I kind of got this freaky fluttery feeling that was a cross between being worried and being nauseous— Kyle taking the bus wasn't usually a good sign.

"Dude, did Stan and Wendy blow you off or something?" I asked, fearing the worst: everyone in school already figured we were doing it up the butt with each other and decided to ostracize us for the rest of eternity.

"No, Stan has a dentist's appointment today, so I told Wendy not to bother driving over," he said easily.

Good. So if it wasn't my worst fear, then my two-track brain switched back into "everything will be okay" mode.

Life was nice when you didn't care.

I came to a stop next to Kyle. "So . . . "

He didn't move much. "Yeah . . . "

We were the only two at the bus stop, but that wasn't going to last much longer. The fresh layer of last night's snowfall would start turning to a chunky sort of mush once everyone started showing up. Usually, we all cut it as close to the wire as possible, but this method sometimes left me without a ride if the bus ever came early.

I laughed a little at the "came early" part before deciding to bring up last night to Kyle.

"You sent it out anyway," I said simply, staring at my boots.

He inhaled, long and tempered. "Yeah."

"Why?" I asked, looking up to survey the area. It was still all clear. "I thought leaking it was, you know, a _bad_ thing."

"It is— it was," he said. "But I thought about it a lot, after you left. No matter which way I looked at it, it was a lose-lose situation."

"Oh yeah?" I gave him a _look_. "So you lose at your own hand, rather than losing at the hand of the universe?"

He nodded. "That's the point, I guess."

"Damn," I murmured, trying to repress a smirk. "You really like to be in control of the situation, don't you?"

"No, I just don't like Cartman being in control. That's all."

"Uh-huh," I hummed, before casually coughing out a "_control-freak!_" into my gloved hand.

I glanced sideways and saw Token, about half a block down the sidewalk. It wasn't hard to miss him. He was like a dark omen, cloaked in a purple hoodie and Nike wear. Any other day, that wouldn't have meant anything, but today was going to be hefty.

"Dude. I am not. I had other reasons—" Kyle rebutted, but I elbow-nudged him to quiet down.

"Talk to me about it later," I said. "At lunch or something."

"Lunch? I'm not sitting with you at lunch, that'll be _begging_ for jokes," he told me. I ignored him.

In fact, I didn't pay him any attention whatsoever the moment Token came into a ten-foot radius of us. I stared into space, because that's what non-awkward, non-gay, _cool_ people do.

Okay, I lied. Maybe I _was_ a bit worried about my reputation. Weird, I was fine before I'd left the house.

"Hey guys," Token said off-handedly, standing much further away from me than I was from Kyle. I noticed this, and I tried to edge sideways to widen the gap.

"Hey," we both said, taking turns.

"Where's your car?" Kyle asked him fearlessly. I wouldn't have said anything at all, really.

He gripped his backpack. "In the shop. Transmission died on me already, but I guess that's what you get with classic makes," he said. I rolled my eyes. Token didn't know shit about cars, but his parents got him an auctioned speedster. Of course.

"Oh. Lame," Kyle commented.

"Yeah," Token said. "I wanted it out by this weekend, but I don't think it's gunna happen."

"Too much work or something?"

"Nah," he said. "They just needed to bring in a new one from Boulder. It's a specific model, so it probably won't happen until next week at the earliest."

Boulder, my ass. "I've got one," I said. Kyle shot me a weird look.

"What?" Token asked.

"I've got one. For your Porsche, right?"

Neither of them looked like they believed me very much. But neither of them have ever been in my backyard; at least not for very long. We had more dead cars than dead hookers back there . . . not that we had any of the latter. Not for a while.

"Are you sure? Because I'd buy it off you, no problem," he said.

"Yeah, I could even install it for cheap," I said, because my mouth felt like one-upping their doubt. But it didn't seem to do any better, because Token had a glimmer of disapproval flash across his face. I already knew what he was thinking. Don't trust a fifteen year-old to do a man's job, yeah yeah. But I'd spent more time in my driveway on my back than Kyle had ever spent on homework, so it was Token's pompous loss. Douche.

"As awesome as that'd be, Kenny, I think I'll keep it in the shop. Don't want to have to pay them for nothing, right?"

Super-douche.

"Yeah, well, hit me up if you want the transmission. Hundred bucks," I said flatly. I regretted not naming a higher price, but whatever. It wasn't making me money by sitting in the dirt anyway.

"Cool. I'll probably call you up after school," he said, rather unconvincingly, before pocketing his hands. 'Probably' wasn't 'for sure'. I might've been excited if I'd gotten a 'for sure'. At least that would've meant extra cash (and extra food— Cartman hadn't given up on that yet, but at least I'd stashed some snacks from the weekend).

For a minute there, I thought the conversation was safe, and that I'd adequately distracted him from any emails he might've received this morning. For a minute there, I was glad Kyle had asked about his car, because it deleted any possibility of Token's first question being about the two of us alone at a bus stop. Kyle was smart; I already knew that.

Kyle was a lot of things.

But, just when I'd gotten comfortably pissed at Token for disregarding my super-awesome automotive ability, and thought we were in the clear, he started another sentence.

"So . . ."

_That_ kind of sentence.

". . . You two been hanging out a lot?"

And thus began a morning of hesitant questions and badly-disguised whispers, all delivered while we were still standing next to the street curb. As more of our classmates showed up, we got less and less conversation out of anyone— not many mentioned the email, but _everyone_ had seen it. I knew it; I could tell by the looks on their faces. I would've been laughing too, if it'd been _anyone_ but me, but the weird part? Nobody was laughing at all.

At least Butters was polite enough to quietly tell me he didn't mind "I-if ya like boy-doodles, Kenny."

I should've smoked.

Kyle and I took very different and very separated seats on the bus, so it wasn't that bad. It wasn't until I got a text, with "FAGGOT" in the subject line, that I felt a little weird.

I opened it.

It was from Kyle. I could've punched him.

_Talk after school? Not my place,_ it read. I smiled a bit.

_Can't wait, my darling._ Fuck if he calls me a faggot and gets away with it.

I prepared myself for what was bound to be the Best Day of My Life, and I wanted to sleep through it all. I didn't care, right? I didn't care last night. I didn't— and I _shouldn't_— care now. It was all a stupid joke on us, and it was just a stupid photo that didn't mean anything. I had nothing to lose, no popularity to cry over. Right?

I realized that I'd been putting on a brave face for Kyle.

Because to me, that photo really _did_ mean something. Somewhere, deep in my perpetually rotting chest-cavity (which would surely be ran over with a truck soon), I had feelings for him.

My phone vibrated again. _Very funny…Good luck today._

I had feelings for Kyle Broflovski.

* * *

Things didn't improve much when the morning announcements rolled around. I tried not to pay attention to a line obviously written in at the last minute that detailed the Drama Club's production of _West Side Story_ ("a modern take on the Shakespearean classic _Romeo and Juliet_, starring South Park High's own Kyle Broflovski and Kenny McCormick in the lead roles— but _you _tell me which one's the girl, folks!") so I buried my face into my history book instead.

Did I say Kyle was smart? Up there, before the page break? I'm sorry. I meant to say he was incredibly stupid. I didn't care what sort of righteous vindication trip he was on— he was a freakin' idiot, sending out that photo. I thought he'd have a bigger problem with it than I did. Maybe that was true, and he really was. But I wasn't enjoying the humor behind it all, like I thought I would.

I could take a joke any day. But this, for once, wasn't a joke.

My _life_ was a joke.

But, regardless, I carried on like I said I would. There were plenty of worse things in the world than being labeled as a homo. For one, I could've be dead . . . okay, that wasn't that bad, so scratch that. Instead, I could've been forced to watch a marathon of The Jersey Shore.

Yeah. That was worse than sitting through the announcements.

Stan didn't walk in with his newly-whitened teeth until third period English. He took his usual seat in front of me.

A minute and a half later, he passed me a folded-over note. I really didn't want to look at it, so I waited until the teacher pulled down the projector screen for a movie clip and the lights went off.

_Dude. Wendy's pissed you guys took her car._

Funny, that wasn't what I was expecting. Yes, okay, Stan saw the photo, but out of the _millions_ of things he could've said, he said that? Sure, I guess it was a bad thing that her car was in the shot, but I'd been too busy worrying over, oh, I don't know, what we were doing _inside_ of it.

_Kyle said it was ok,_ I scratched out. As if that would make things any better.

I passed it back to him.

_Kyle doesn't have his license yet. How many drinks did you give him?_

I looked down at the paper with the slightest amount of contempt. Dude, did Stan think this was _my_ fault? I was incapacitated; how could it have been _my_ fault?

_He kidnapped me. And hell if I know. He wasn't drunk._

The projector made a noise and the reel ran out of film, displaying the obnoxious bright white of nothingness onto the screen. I squinted.

_He told me he was. He said he browned out._

I stared at Stan's scribbly writing. And then I got it. Stan thought Kyle was drunk— why else would he be leaning against my shoulder? Why else would he be holding my hand?

Kyle told Stan he was drunk, and he didn't remember any of it.

That bastard had a better excuse than I did. . . Considering I didn't have one at all.

I'd finished writing another sentence and was about to pass it back to Stan when the lights flicked back on and illuminated my _perfect_ timing. Needless to say, I was spotted by the teacher, and was asked to read aloud what I'd written.

Of course, that wasn't my plan at all. For one, it wasn't a particularly interesting sentence— all it said was "_That's complete shit"._ But more importantly, it was a cold day today, and between that and my blooming embarrassment, I was as zipped up as I could get. Enjoying both the rush of nostalgia and my privilege of wearing a hood for "religious observance" (I filled out a form and everything back in ninth grade, just for kicks), I casually recited the sentence "Lhhnn Kmnnns Pssy Khhts Lssbnn Dnntehh Dmms", which roughly translated into something regarding Cartman's mother and vaginal condoms.

Stan repressed a laugh. He was probably the only one who understood what I said.

"Kenny, please. Don't be a smart aleck," the teacher said with a growing amount of resignation. I'd done this before, by the way. I'd done it a _lot_.

"Dnn yss shty frsss fmm zz nhhtys."

"Kenny! Enough. Hand me the note."

I wanted to swallow it, right then and there, but that would've gotten me suspended. Then again, I wouldn't mind being suspended. But, my morals and my digestive tract got the better of me, so instead I hastily ripped my zipper back down to debate and explain the purpose of the form I filled out which she was clearly in danger of ignoring. It was legal, I knew people! I had a lawyer!

I didn't say any of that.

I handed her the paper. I didn't freakin' care anymore.

She quickly scanned the note, from top to bottom, and flipped the paper over to double-check that nothing had been written on the back. I was waiting for her to be done with her examination and fulfill her promise of reading it to the class like it was a fuckin' Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, but she never did.

"What? What's it say?" some jackass from across the room said.

She shook her head. "It's too inappropriate for the classroom," she said, folding it back up. I was hoping she wouldn't confiscate it, but she did, and tucked it neatly away in one of her desk drawers.

Come on. It wasn't _that_ inappropriate.

"Dude, it was probably a love letter," Kevin muttered.

"Probably," someone from the other side of him agreed.

I scratched my nose with my middle finger.

"Come on, settle down," the teacher instructed, but that never did anything. "Kenny, I'm going to have to have you go to the office."

I sat up. "What? Why?"

"You're causing too big of a disruption. You're not in trouble, but," she carried on. "Here, take this pass with you."

I sat, astonished, as she handed me an office pass. I reluctantly stood up, and it wasn't until then that I really got a good look at the number of kids in the classroom. Everyone was staring at me. Everyone was in this class, except the advanced placement kids— everyone but Kyle, Wendy, Bebe, Jimmy, and of all people, Cartman. I stared at the rest of the sophomore class, the lazy ones like Stan and the dumbfucks like me, and got a good idea of what it felt like to be a loser.

I guess I always _was_ a loser, because of my family's financial status and the fact I was usually found shooting squirrels with air soft guns, but I'd never really _felt_ like one.

Timmy gave me a sympathetic look on my way out. "Timmehh . . . "

I didn't read the office pass until I was in the hallway. The teacher had written the date, the classroom number, her name and mine, and the reason for my "visit" to the administrators.

_See Guidance Counselor._

I shook my head, and spitefully smiled to myself.

Nope. I was taking off.

* * *

Kyle knocked on my door at 3:15 pm, and I yelled at him from the garage to barrel under the open crack. As of last Easter, our door didn't open all the way, and no one had bothered to replace the motor yet, so he slid under the open two-foot tall crevice and drug his backpack through after him.

"Dude, where'd you go? I was looking for you during passing period," he said, dropping his stuff near the open toolbox. Meanwhile, Token had texted me later in the day and decided he wanted to look at the transmission I had, which meant I had to drag it out from the backyard and inspect it for damage. Unfortunately for me, it still had fluid in it, which left a trail through the house. I was going to be murdered later when my parents saw it on the carpet.

I wiped my hands on my pants. "I left," I said simply.

"When? I didn't see you in the cafeteria," he said, taking a seat on a large bucket of what I presumed was paint. I didn't know what was in garage; I hadn't been in here in years.

"I came home before lunch," I said. "I was sent to the office, and I didn't want to go."

"Dude," Kyle said. "Again?"

I didn't like how he said it. "Yeah, _again_." I tried tilting the giant piece of metal sideways; it didn't work. "It's not like I was doing anything stupid. Craig's in there all the time, but that's for being a jackass. I just mind my own business most of the time," I reasoned. "Help me move this."

Kyle stood up and took the back end, and we agreed to lift on "3". My side went up; his really failed at that. "Dude, how much does this thing _weigh_?"

"A lot," I said. "C'mon, don't be a pussy. Lift."

We moved it aside, to the corner of the garage, leaking another black oily trail that traced our steps. This better have been the right fucking transmission; I didn't ruin the flooring for nothing.

"So," Kyle said, wiping his forehead, "It wasn't because of . . . well, you know?"

"What, being sent to the office? Nothing to do with the email. Stan and I were passing notes in class."

He didn't look too happy with that information. "You talked to Stan?"

"Yep. Someone had a nice alibi prepared, didn't they?" I said to him, raising my eyebrows.

Kyle took a seat again. I rolled myself under the crappy Pinto that was parked next to us.

"Shit. Well, what else was I supposed to tell him?"

"I dunno. The truth, maybe," I said from under the car. "I wish I would've thought of an excuse sooner, though. Nice going."

"You have one," Kyle told me. "You can say you tried to take advantage of me while I was inebriated. Turn it into a I-Fucked-Kyle victory story," he joked, then after a moment of my silence, he quickly added "Please don't actually say that."

I smirked. "It sounds pretty accurate, though," I said. "Wanna be my latest sexual conquest?" I laughed.

"I'll pass, thanks," I heard him say. I occupied myself with looking at the anterior of the car above me, both studying the way the transmission was thrown in, and calling myself dumb for giving Token such a cheap price. I didn't hear anything for a while on Kyle's end, though, until his face showed up to the right of mine and I realized he'd slid under the car next to me. I dropped a spare nut out of surprise, and it bounced off my cheekbone.

"Dude, Kyle. _Warn_ me."

He laughed, and I nudged him sideways. He laughed harder. I'd probably have a spot there when I got up, whether from bruising or from grime. Thank _god_ it didn't land on my neck— I didn't want to explain any "hickeys" tomorrow.

"So, you're not mad then? For what I told Stan," he asked, much more seriously.

I let out a sigh, my arms still fixed up and above me. "Nah, I figured you'd do something like that anyway."

"Oh ye of little faith, dude."

"I'm serious," I said. "I would've done the same thing, if I woulda thought of something in time."

Kyle gazed up at the gray and black piping over our heads, keeping quiet. I was starting to notice that he did that a lot— before, if you would've asked me, I might have said Kyle was someone who didn't know how to shut up. Not in a bad way, of course, but because he was constantly proving points. In class, he got called on. At home, he had Sheila for a mother. And he _always_ had to tell the Fatass to fuck off. Kyle usually talked a lot, so in these weird moments when he didn't, I was always worried about what he was thinking.

I wondered if Stan ever got to experience the same sort of non-conversation. I was sure they were comfortable enough to sit in a room together for hours without even saying a word.

I was jealous.

"I wasn't ready to tell him," Kyle finally said.

"Huh," I mumbled as I switched wrench sizes. "Why send the photo then?"

"I told you. Cartman would've sent it anyway. It was the prin—"

"—Principle of the matter, yeah yeah. I know."

He folded his hands on his chest. "And, well, I figured it was time to stop worrying about it."

I glanced sideways at him. "Stop worrying about what?"

Kyle shrugged. "You know, all of it. I'm still worried as shit about my family hating me or something. But I mean, look at you. You don't have to worry. You couldn't care less about a stupid thing like an email, or being into guys, or—"

"I'm not, usually," I interrupted.

"—Kissing me like that," he continued, ignoring what I said. I stopped what I was doing and stared upwards. I didn't say anything.

"Do you get what I'm saying, Kenny?" Kyle went on. "Everything with you is so easy. Even death doesn't scare you. Doesn't even _intrigue_ you. And I mean, hell, yesterday, all you had to do was lean in and take what you wanted, no problem. I can't do that. There are so many other factors that run through my head, and I don't know what—"

"—What you should and shouldn't do? Come on, Kyle, you've got common sense. Don't look up to me like I'm a role model."

Next to me, I felt him move a little. "I don't, Kenny. I look up to you as a friend."

A drip of motor oil slipped off the surface and fell onto the side of his face.

"Just a friend?"

He wiped it off. "I don't know."

I studied the stain it left on his skin. He spoke again, before I could even think.

"You were right, by the way. I guess I am a control freak. But I wanted to beat Cartman to it because it felt more like it was _my_ choice. Not his or my mom's or anyone's."

I looked at him. "Was it a good choice?"

He blinked. "I don't know that either."

I shrugged. "You're allowed to make bad choices, Kyle. I mean, that's life."

He exhaled sharply in what I presumed was a laugh, but it didn't match his voice at all. "You know, you're the first person to tell me that," he said, before he smiled at me, in such a tragic way, that it made my stomach lining tear. I stared at him for too long, and I couldn't help but think things that I shouldn't have thought. I slowly worked my way into a nod, and smiled with effort, before breaking eye contact.

"Token will be around soon. I've gotta move that thing out front," I said, making the move to slide back out from under the car.

I didn't make it very far before Kyle caught my shoulder. I looked back at him, at an awkward diagonal.

"I wanted an excuse. To spend more time with you. That's why I sent the photo. I didn't know if Cartman would send it at all, so I sent it anyway," he said. "That's why."

I stared at him, really wondering if he'd just said that, and when I realized that I wasn't high off of automotive fumes, I nodded.

"That's the worst decision I've ever seen you make, Kyle."

I smiled.

* * *

A/N: Translations. "Liane Cartman's wet pussy collects lesbian dental dams" and "Don't use shitty phrases from the nineties"... I really need to stop speaking in vernacular.


	10. Chapter 10

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

My morning was short. I woke up on time, and I found a clean pair of underwear that didn't have any holes in it, so I was actually in a good mood. I knew, really, that it was because of what happened yesterday afternoon. I knew that I awoke from a pleasant six-and-a-half hours of sleep in a pleasant demeanor and was having a pleasant pleasant time because of Kyle. I knew it, but I didn't admit it.

No, I was not having a good morning because of him. I was having a good morning because God said so. Because I didn't need to smoke. Because Mom wasn't drunk yet.

I sighed as I tossed it all around in my painfully small mind. Somewhere, probably in one of those cheesy-ass motivational assemblies they made us go to in elementary school, I'd heard a guy in a suit tell all of us about making choices for the better. He told us that we were in control, and if we didn't like how our lives were going, we had the Power to Fix It! Though he was far from right (because, c'mon, like I really had fucking control over how many guard dogs had mauled me to death), I kind of felt like I was guilty of not trying to change anything. How, even on the best morning I'd had in weeks, I still considered my parents' sobriety and my working toaster oven a direct result of destiny not being a douchebag.

I thought about this, and then I ate my toast like a fucking champ. Was the whole deal with Kyle just a fluke? Was it fate or God or a domino effect?

For a moment, I almost convinced myself that I was actively seeking Kyle out. That I really _was_ in control.

Holy balls, that made me a faggot.

I suddenly became very aware of the manner in which I swallowed my toast. I felt uncomfortable with it in my mouth, which was weird, because I usually liked having things in my mouth.

Titties and toast. I repeated it over and over as I chewed. Titties and toast. Nothing else. Right?

I couldn't help it. My brain couldn't stop. My toast was now a metaphorical dick, and my real-iphorical dick was kind of turned on by that.

I walked to the bus stop instead of jacking off. I was angry at my hormones for ruining my sterile mood, and I was at even greater odds with myself for trying to be sterile in the first place. I'd never denied my testes until this month. Call me a romantic, but I didn't want to have Kyle's face pop up in my mind's eye when I was wanking it. That space was reserved for Megan Fox only.

And sometimes goats.

. . . Let's not get illegal here.

"Dude, that's kind of gross," Stan told me in homeroom. "You should really put that away."

"What? It's natural."

"It's totally not. I don't want to see you lick it like that," he said, with a disgusted look on his face.

I rolled my eyes before scooping out the last of my yogurt. "Fine." I took the plastic spork out of nearly-empty cup and tossed it in the trash bin to my left.

"Where'd you get that from anyway? I didn't give you any cash last week, did I?" he asked.

"Jesus, dude, don't worry. I don't owe you shit right now," I said, stretching out at my desk. "I found a five on the ground the other day and I stocked up."

Stan hummed in acknowledgement or relief, I couldn't tell which. I didn't care, really. He still hadn't offered to help me out with the food thing, but I wasn't about to ask him outright. That wasn't cool of me.

A middle-aged voice from inside my head rang out. _You have the choice to change your life! Face your problems! Take what you deserve!_

I deserved a fucking handjob. I wasn't about to ask for that anytime soon either.

Instead, I sunk in my plastic seat as an overhead voice rang out across the PA system. Morning announcements. Hopefully, they'd be decidedly less homo-suggestive than they were yesterday.

". . . lunch will be delayed an extra fifteen minutes due to the food service workers' health inspection . . ."

Nothing had really caught my fancy for the first half. I'd managed to tune them out entirely as I shifted around in my desk hole, knowing that I'd stashed an extra pack of rolling papers there last week. I proceeded to waste them as I made miniature origami swans, one by one, until the wood grain of my desktop resembled cartoonish ripples in their "river".

I was as childish as I was starved and sexless.

"Mid-winter Formal tickets will only be sold until Thursday afternoon; I repeat, that's Thursday afternoon . . ."

Stan glanced over at me. "Dude, make me one."

"I've only got two papers left."

"So? Just unfold one of those other bird things," he said.

"I can't, they'll be all crinkly," I whined. Stan shot me a look. Yes, I was being stupid. I knew I'd folded them up in the first place, and that they'd be unsuitable for any type of doobie shaping afterwards, but I didn't care. I'd made my damn origami swans.

"Couple's tickets will be discounted fifteen percent . . . " the PA rang out. I sighed, brushing the birds off to the corner of my desk. "Wendy taking you?" I asked casually, knowing fully that Wendy would've made such a thing mandatory, and Stan was enough of a good boyfriend to suck it up.

"Yeah. Our parents are making a big deal out of it," he said. "It's not like it's prom or anything."

"Nnnn," I mumbled. I stared down at the graded test that was just handed back by the teacher. It landed on my desktop, and the letter circled at the top of the page was above a C. I didn't fail.

"You should go with us, dude. I don't want to be the only guy there," he said.

"The only guy? What, no one else is going?"

Stan shrugged. "Well, I mean, Clyde's taking Annie, and I think Butters is taking his cousin or something."

"Oh," I said, flipping over both sides of the paper marked in red ink. I didn't fail. Not by a long shot.

Tutoring actually helped. I had someone to thank for that.

"What about Kyle?" I asked off-handedly. I didn't care if he was going or not (I mean, it was just a dance), but I thought it was a little weird that Stan hadn't asked him instead of me.

I expected Stan to give me a funny look for even bringing Kyle up, but he didn't. One of the reasons I liked Stan.

"Something about a Bar Mitzvah in the family," he shrugged. "So he's out. You coming?" Stan asked, sounding about as _wonderfully excited_ as I felt.

"Iunno," I replied. Things like school dances only led to empty wallets or underaged intercourse. As much as I loved prepping myself for a career in the adult film industry, I wasn't so sure I wanted to put up with a girl all night.

And in a moment of weirdness, where all I could think of was my own stupid brain and my own stupid dick, I wasn't so sure I could. I wasn't so sure _anything_ could adequately distract me from Stan's Super Best Friend.

If I took a date, they'd have to have some pretty huge fucking knockers.

I texted Bebe.

* * *

Classes let out early that Friday because of parent-teacher conferences. My parents weren't going. It wasn't that they didn't care about my grades, it was just that I'd forgotten to mention the date. They didn't need to meet with my teachers anyway— I wasn't exactly a favorite student.

I tossed my shit in my locker and shut the door, the motion mirrored by fifty other students in the hallway, all clanging their padlocks into metal. I doubted any of them were thrilled about tonight anyway; the only good came from the fact that we got to take off at one-thirty instead of three. I quickly flipped open my cell phone a final time before it died; Bebe finally texted back agreeing to going to the dance with me as a final resort. It was nice knowing I was a choice cut in popular boy steak.

I smiled in spite of myself, knowing I wasn't even on the same goddamn cow. If it weren't for my dashing good looks and my winning personality, I'd only have so much to brag about.

Yeah, right.

I took two steps sideways after pocketing my phone. For a moment, I thought I'd dropped it, or that it fell through an unknown hole in my pants, because I heard the clatter of plastic against linoleum.

In fact, I heard a _lot_ of clatter and a _lot_ of plastic.

It came from around the corner, and it came accompanied with a much louder _slam!_ of body-into-metal, echoing sharply through the emptying halls. Shit, or what was better defined as the contents of a backpack, scattered across the floor a few yards ahead of me, and I heard the familiar sound of lard against vocal cords.

"You think this is funny?" Cartman's voice cut through in a hoarse whisper. "You think you can just do whatever the fuck you want? Oh, look, someone's standing up to his family! Look how _cute_ he is, asserting his independence—"

I stopped moving. I knew who he was talking to.

"You're a piece of shit, you know that Kahl? You do _not_—" there was another slam, as something hit the lockers— "upstage me like that. You hear me?"

"Let go," I heard Kyle say. It worried me; he'd said it much more calmly than he normally would've. Kyle wasn't calm in situations like this— at least, not the situations I was used to seeing.

"Yeah, okay, sure. Let me just _let_ you go. Do you even hear what I'm saying?"

"I said let _go,_ fatass."

"You think you're a little angel, don't you? Go ahead, crusade all you want. Show me up a thousand times. I dare you, Kahl! Do it! See if I care when you make a goddam faggot out of yourself when you try to one-up me again!"

"Dude—"

Jackets, or the sound of jackets fighting, briefly interrupted them. Kyle had tried to pop Cartman in the jaw, and there was a loud fist-to-face slap as a result.

"—Fuck!— stop—"

"I'm not the one who needs to stop, Kahl! You want to up the freakin' ante, go ahead! It won't be your parents this time around. I won't even _bother_ telling them about how much you love to take it up the ass if you've already told them for me. I swear."

My pulse was already at a jog. All I needed to do was walk over there.

Where was Stan? Why wasn't he here?

"Dude, fuck you—" Kyle interjected.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Kahl! That's fucking sick. Don't even worry about your family anymore, man, 'cuz you've already got bigger problems."

All I needed to do was walk over and separate them. I'd done it a thousand times before.

Why wasn't I doing anything?

From around the corner, Cartman didn't shut up. He never did. But his voice quickly dropped to a much lower decibel, barely audible from where I was standing. "I want you to know something, Kahl. I can arrange for any provisions I want. By this time tomorrow, I could have your ass in Juvie for double homicide. You're worried about being a flamer?" A quick jerking sound bounced off the padlock. "You've got bigger things to worry about, Kahl."

"You're overreacting," Kyle spat out.

"Oh!" Cartman huffed. "You think so? My bad, Kahl. Let me apologize to you."

On cue, my legs unstuck themselves, and finally, after three— four— five extra hurried steps, I turned the corner and got a look at them.

Cartman had Kyle up by the collar, one fat hand around the material and one fat fist curled back into slingshot position— but after a quick double-take at the new presence in the hallway, he paused in mid-action.

I stared at him.

And after a moment of dead air, in which Cartman eyed me carefully for several seconds, he smiled courteously and let Kyle drop an inch closer to the floor.

"You're not dead yet?" Cartman asked in a joking tone. Something inside me lurched, in the same way that my stomach knotted up when Kyle had first recognized my post-humous resurrection. But no, Cartman was only referring to the fact that I hadn't starved to death yet.

Cartman didn't know anything about my condition, and yet he was so spot on, I nearly forgot what I was doing.

"No," I said, taking a casual step forward. "You wanna let Kyle go?"

I watched them both with a sharp focus on Cartman's hands.

"You want me to?" he asked in a weird sort of way. We weren't glaring, and Cartman certainly had a friendly smile spread across his mouth, but his words hung on his breath.

This wasn't a friendly conversation.

I nodded, and without taking his eyes off me, Cartman let Kyle sink until his sneakers touched the tile again. Kyle quickly ducked out from his grip and edged his way closer to me.

"Nice to see you looking out for your friends, Kinny. I hope I get to see more of that."

I stared at him, my lids at half-mast, with a keen attempt to keep my cool. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to.

"I'll catch you guys later. I've got some errands to run anyway," he continued, as he slung his backpack over his shoulder. He took a few steps toward the end of the hallway, before he looked back over his shoulder.

"Oh, and Kahl? I'll text you later tonight."

His last comment almost unnerved me. Almost.

I watched as he made for the exit, and Kyle and I were left alone to the mess on the hallway floor and the anxiety in his face. When he finally said something to me, he sounded a lot less calm than he had when he was held up face to face with Cartman.

"Sorry," he commented, quickly bending down to shove his books back into the biggest zipper. I couldn't see his face too well, but he looked shaken.

"'Sorry?' What the hell are you sorry for?" I asked, watching stupidly for a second before leaning down to help him.

He opened his mouth, but shut it right after a sigh. I caught a glimpse of red, and his movements were much too vermin-like at the moment for him to have been in the right mind. "I don't know. Yeah," he spoke, nearly close-mouthed.

"Dude. Kyle. Chill," I offered, handing him his pencil case. I knew it was the inappropriate moment, so I tried not to laugh that the fact that he actually used one in high school.

I felt really bad for thinking it was funny.

He took it and promptly shoved it into his backpack, along with his Chemistry notebook and a few test strips for his blood sugar. I didn't want to acknowledge that I thought any of it was funny. And, for once, I couldn't laugh at the fact that Kyle was a huge nerd.

After all, I realized, I'd been a huge coward. I didn't move until the last minute, when I was certain that Cartman was going to beat the shit out of Kyle, and when I was certain I wasn't going to miss out on a crucial piece of information. Was it really more important to me that I waited for the "right" moment to intercede?

I picked up each individual stick of #2, .7mm lead, and dropped them back into their plastic container. I didn't get it. I thought Stan was supposed to save Kyle from this sort of thing . . . not that Kyle usually needed saving.

Hell, if anyone needed a knight in shining armor, it was my periodically rupturing aorta. And by shining armor, I meant new defibrillators.

"Here," I said flatly, passing him the last of his messily strewn notebook paper. "You okay?"

He nodded. "Yeah. It's no big deal." Kyle zipped up the front pocket of his backpack, and kept his hand on the seam. "I wish we were still in fourth grade. I could still beat him up when I was taller than him."

"It's your fault for going vegetarian during puberty," I commented lightly. "You were worse than Stan that year." I meant it as a joke, because god knew we both needed a joke, but it didn't sound funny at all when it came out of my mouth.

Kyle didn't seem to appreciate the way I said it either.

"Stan's not that bad."

He elbowed his way awkwardly back into his backpack straps and kneeled his way upright. I was afraid that, for a second, he wasn't going to offer to help me up. It wasn't that I was expecting it; I just felt that, for some reason, he'd have to. Because it was _me_.

I felt selfish for thinking it, but I didn't give a fuck. It was _me_.

Kyle leaned down to retie his shoe, and I ignored his unevenly popped collar. I ignored the fact that he hadn't cussed out Cartman nearly as much as usual, and that something was clearly wrong with his normally defiant nature.

He pulled me up anyway. It was a sheer force of good will, because he didn't look happy.

"Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that—" I started.

"I know." He said it simply and in one short breath. "I know. I'm not angry at you."

I nodded. "Kay." I hoped he wasn't. I still couldn't tell with Kyle, even if he assured me only last week that he wanted to become better friends.

Or something like friends.

"Hey," he said, after inspecting his locker for a minute's worth of damage assessment. "I've gotta get going. Thanks for helping me out." He said it to me in a depressingly boring manner.

I didn't get it. I'd just saved him, albeit at the last possible moment, and he didn't seem to care. He was still very plainly shaken up, but there was something else underneath his skin that I couldn't dig out.

I swallowed my cummy pride and decided to let it go, for his sake. "Watch your back," I told him as he turned to leave.

"Uh-huh."

"Oh, and have fun at that Bar-Mitzvah thing tonight," I continued easily. To be nice. He looked at me with a twinge of confusion, which at first made me wonder if I'd heard Stan right earlier, but then he gave me a nod and assured me he would.

"I'll catch you around Ken," he said as he collected the last of his things.

"Yeah. You too," I replied, watching him walk towards the office and around the corner. I waited until he was out of sight before I even considered leaving, because I'd already pussied out on helping him once.

When I finally decided it was time to move, I shuffled my foot forward and kicked something small into the bottom of the lockers. I squinted at first, because I wasn't sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, but I wasn't wrong.

Kyle had a tooth knocked out of him. It was sitting on the floor, covered in a bit of spit and a bit of blood, and even though it was a molar, I felt like the biggest douchebag in the world.

I could've spared him the loss, if I'd only stepped into their fight earlier.

The voice of that fucking motivational speaker kept looping in my mind. _Change your life! Make the right choices! Only YOU can push yourself to reach the stars!_

I was choosing this. Kyle's dentistry, my domestic situation, my grades. It wasn't fate, or predestined karma.

It was all on me.

* * *

A/N: So, a month and a half later, I'm back with a short chapter. It's cool, chapters 10 and 11 will be more of a two-parter anyway; the next one is already written and simply needs to be edited! I've been awake for the past 41 hours without sleep (cosplay! convention! birthday party! work! travel!) so forgive me if there are any fatal errors in this chapter XD Thanks for keeping up guys!


	11. Chapter 11

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

Four hours later, I was in a suit, or something like one.

I'd tried to get out of it at the last minute. I know I'd promised Stan that I'd save him from himself, but I couldn't help but want to ditch the thing entirely. Because it was an all-grades formal, it was held in the gym, which had no working central air system— an hour later, and I'd already sweated out whatever Four Loko I'd managed to sneak in.

I sat. Wendy and Stan were perfectly matched and color-coordinated, right down to Stan's metaphorical leash and collar. I mean, I couldn't blame the guy for being a good boyfriend, but when my last steady relationship had ended in a lethal S.T.I., I found it hard to trust a girl enough to decide what color tie looked best with my skin tone. So I wistfully watched Stan and Wendy accompany one another to the dance floor, wishing I'd stocked up on more "punch" and resorting to eye-fucking Bebe's rack.

She minded, by the way. Unfortunately for me, she hadn't grown up to be _that_ big of a whore.

So, as I casually sported a soon-to-welt slapmark, I couldn't help but feel like more of a third-wheel than ever. Granted, Kyle probably got the brunt end of it more than I did, since he hung out with Stan and Wendy on a daily basis, but at least he was having a good time right now at his crazy Jewish blowout.

I wasn't even Catholic enough to enjoy free alcohol at communion, and that was saying something.

I flipped open my phone, freshly charged and ready for action, and I found my fingertips idly flipping through my address book. I opened a new message template.

_I have a present for you._ Send.

I was banking on the hope that Kyle was feeling better. I knew he wasn't, and that missing a piece of your mouth really sucked balls, but it was worth a half-drunken shot. Besides, being with family always seemed to help, even if he'd tried to off himself to get away from them.

A minute passed, and a bad mashup of two Top-40 hits played through the subwoofers.

_Yeah? I'll get it from you tomorrow._

Good. He was busy.

I found myself smiling, even though it wasn't a funny or heartwarming message. My facial muscles simply wanted to contort into that sort of expression.

_Nah. I'll drop it off tonight. Where u at later?_ Send.

Shots, shots, and SHOTS! played over the speakers, marking the dance's first foray into inappropriately chosen music. The staff chaperones gained a look of horror that deepened with every "fuck" in the song.

I waited for a moment, and another moment, and got Bebe an apology drink before Kyle texted me back.

_Don't know. Family might go out afterwards. _

Oh.

_I'll just meet you at your place_, I tapped out on the keyboard. _I really don't want to b_—

I flipped my phone shut in an instant as my date took a seat next to me. She leaned back, her slutty red dress only working to emphasize how much of a slut she really wasn't.

She looked too good for it, in a way.

"You buzzed yet?" she asked me off-handedly, her elbows splayed backwards against the table in support. Her chest was too evident, and it really didn't help guys like me.

"Nah," I said, pocketing my phone. "Not really."

She sort-of-smiled. "Good. I won't have to hit you again."

"That's abuse," I replied. "I know you don't want me to be here and all, but c'mon."

"All the more reason to hit you," she grinned. "You've got to have _some_ sort of common sense instilled in you, right?"

I rolled my eyes, but I smiled. I wouldn't know common sense if I ingested it by accident. Not unlike antifreeze, really.

"You sound like a stereotype," I said, leaning forward against my knees. "The feminist kind."

"Something wrong with that?"

I shrugged. "Guess not."

She sighed, and took another sip of her watered-down Hawaiian Punch. "Sometimes people have to be stereotypical," she said. "Look at Stan and Wendy."

"What about them?"

"Well, come on," she started, swirling her cup as if it were wine. "Star athlete and Class President. Kind-of-dumb guy and overly-educated girl. They fit the bill for a bad chick flick."

I watched as she idly ran a finger or two through her perm. She hadn't surprised me earlier when I picked her up in Token's car (which I took on a test drive— come on, what do you take me for?) and she looked like a pageant queen. She probably could've been, if she wasn't so damn uptight about everything and gave into the idea of a beauty contest.

Looking at her, I felt a weird sense of betrayal. I couldn't lie; she was fucking attractive, but as much as I was allowed to like her— as much as society told me I was _supposed_ to like her boobs and her body and her ass— I felt almost as if I was cheating.

It was stupid. Kyle and I weren't even dating, even if half the school seemed to think we were.

"They work together," I said, ignoring my thoughts. "I mean, when they're not fighting and shit."

She smiled, just a little bit. The kind of smile that pissed me off, usually.

"I can tell you're jealous."

I looked sideways at her, and then I looked back at Stan and Wendy. "What? You mean of them?" I watched as Stan laughed at something. "I don't have anything to be jealous about."

"Not really," she said, taking another sip. "I mean of Stan. Of your friends." She set the cup down next to her on the table, a red ring of soft drink forming at the bottom where she'd sloshed. "We're not really here together, after all."

I watched her, and then I stared at the floor. "Yeah." Though I'd never pinned Bebe as the insightful type, I wasn't surprised to hear that she was sharper than she let on. And in the end, she was right. Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I wanted what Stan had, or maybe I just wanted some fucking attention— either way, I wasn't the poster child for friendships, or any kind of relationships, really.

I was a player and a stuntman, and I made money off of eating dirt.

And while I was jealous, I was happier than fuck for Stan right now.

"I'm glad you asked me to the dance, Kenny," I heard Bebe say, through the muck of my brain.

She wasn't half bad, I'd realized, and for once it wasn't because of her vagina. Bebe didn't suck as much as I thought. "I'm glad we're not here together," I said with a smirk.

She smiled.

"Why didn't Kyle show up? Could've kept us company," she asked, in a nice change of pace.

I shrugged. "Some family member's doing the big boy Jewish thing," I said. "He's with family."

I waited for her to answer, until I realized she wasn't talking. I looked over at her, and I didn't get her confused expression. "What?" I asked.

"I just texted him about our homework. He said he's working on it right now," she said. "I was wondering why he chose a lock-in rather than a night out, you know?"

I looked at her curiously, and sat upright.

"He's what?"

She pulled an eyebrow upward. "He's at home, I guess," she explained. "I seriously doubt he'd be writing an essay at a party."

As much as I wanted to believe he was, I snorted out a nervous laugh. I studied Bebe. She wasn't lying.

And that meant someone _was_. Now that I looked back on it, Kyle had looked utterly confused when I'd mentioned the Bar Mitzvah to him earlier. What, was it all a fabrication?

Seriously?

I shoved my hand into my pocket and grabbed Token's car keys.

* * *

Ten minutes of driving left me anxiously wondering why I going in the first place. If Kyle clearly didn't give a fuck about telling the truth to me, then why was I bothering?

And yet, every moment that passed in which I blamed him in my mind for being smart and cunning and a pathological liar, I justified it with ideas and explanations. He'd been in a fight today. He had to go to the dentist. He was depressed or upset or locked in a closet.

My mind flickered over to the darker side of things, and I wondered whether or not he was relapsing upon his own better judgment. I did have a curious little fucker on my hands, and god knows what he'd try when he was upset.

Every moment that passed along with every painted line on the streets left me expecting an extreme. I knew Kyle wasn't an extreme sort of person, but he'd managed to shock me before. I drove faster, and ran a few reds (that didn't have cameras, because our town was so freakin' cheap), until I stopped in front of his driveway and left the car humming.

His bedroom light was on. I didn't think his family was home.

Proceeding with caution, because my reflexes were telling me that I might step on a landmine at any minute, I let myself in the front door. It was unlocked, which was a horrible idea considering his family's accumulation of upper-middle-class wealth. Even I locked my door when I had the chance, and I didn't have shit to protect.

I counted stairs. Up, up, thirteen, fourteen. Always fourteen in these houses.

Stan had told me the same excuse that Kyle had. Was I clearly missing something here? Why would Stan cover for Kyle, unless he didn't know either?

I pushed open the bedroom door, becoming encased in the off-yellow light of Kyle's desk lamp, and I held my breath.

Kyle was sitting at his laptop, legs crossed and headphones on.

And that was it. He was sitting. Doing _homework. _

. . . I'd psyched myself up.

"Dude!" I yelled his way, which caused him to look up. If he didn't have his headphones on, I swear he would've jumped.

He popped out an earbud. "Kenny? How'd you get—"

"Lock your door, retard!"

He winced, and quickly turned back to his laptop to save his work. "What are you doing here? You leave the dance?"

I made a stupid face. "Oh, I don't know, let me just stand here in my cufflinks and think about it." I stepped into his room and shut the door. "What the fuck, man? You said you had that thing to go to."

Again, he gave me a suspicious sort of look. "The family thing?"

"The Bar Mitzvah."

Kyle looked back down at his laptop. "You mentioned that today. Who'd you hear that from?"

I leaned my weight against his bookshelf. A various assortment of assembled Lego replicas adorned the top, and I tried not to knock them over. "Stan. And you _kind of_ confirmed it yourself earlier."

Though my blood wasn't nearly as hot as it was five minutes earlier, I was still very annoyed with how confused I was. I wasn't used to being out of the loop; not with Kyle or Stan.

"I didn't tell anyone about it," he started, looking vaguely uncomfortable. "I didn't tell Stan."

"What are you talking about?"

"All I ever told Stan was that I was busy tonight," he explained, pushing himself out from his desk. "But he knew?"

I nodded, my eyes narrowed. "Yeah. What?"

He let his hands fall on his lap, and he laughed nervously. "Great. _Shit_." He shut his laptop.

"What?" I asked again, becoming increasingly on edge. "What's up?"

"Cartman," he mentioned. He stood up and walked over to his bed. I stood next to him, but I didn't sit like he did. "He's been memorizing my schedule."

"He's what? Why?"

He shrugged. "He's pissed that I ruined his plan for extortion," he said, looking into his lap. "You saw earlier."

I stared at him, and I didn't know what to think, but my chest was certainly tightened from at least three different emotions. Pitying Kyle definitely didn't need to be thrown into the mix.

"What?" he said, noticing my face, which must've looked constipated.

"So you didn't lie to me?"

He looked up at me, and slowly shook his head. "No. I mean, sure, I didn't go with my parents like I'd planned, but why would I lie?"

"Because," I said, letting my body auto-pilot itself into a seated position, "You've done it before. I mean, no big deal, but," I shrugged.

"Huh," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah?" I asked. It wasn't a very convincing apology, but maybe that was because Kyle didn't know how to apologize.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, I guess I'm just not used to talking to you. Not like this."

I unsheathed myself from my suit coat, but didn't know what I could possibly say. I was in a new area of discomfort; I was admittedly angry at Kyle, but I knew there wasn't much to be angry with. So what, he'd skipped out on the family, and stayed home from an event that I wasn't even supposed to know about. Why should I be upset with him about that?

"I wanted you there, y'know," I said, dropping the coat on his pillows. "It kind of sucked."

"The formal?" he asked, kicking up his legs into the same juvenile crossed position. "Why, was it Bebe?"

I shook my head. "Nah. She wasn't that bad."

"Imagine that," Kyle said sarcastically. "A world in which Bebe and Wendy aren't completely lame."

I half-smiled. "Really, though. She was kind of cool." I fidgeted with my tie, which was a ridiculous shade of maroon— not to be confused with my church tie, which actually looked sort of decent. "But really, dude. It would've been cooler if you showed up. Why stay home tonight in the first place?"

I had other questions, like _Or, why not text me? Why make shit up, Kyle?_, but I let them slide.

Kyle laughed a quick laugh, raising his eyebrows in what must've been personal amusement. "If you must know, I kind of got grounded."

I stared at him. "Seriously? You still get grounded?" I repressed the urge to spit out a laugh. "What'd you do, forget to wash the dishes?" I asked jokingly.

Kyle made a stupid face in retort. "No, douchebag, mom found some stuff in my backpack."

I squinted. "Stuff?"

"Prescription stuff," he shrugged. "I'm not using or anything, I just grabbed some from Craig for my tooth." He finished his sentence with ease, but he quickly gained patches of blush when he realized he'd said it. "Shit, I wasn't going to tell you about that."

I stared at him. "The drug part or the tooth part? I already know, jackass. I still have that 'present' I texted you about." I pulled a baggy out of my pocket.

"Dude. Sick," he said, getting a better look at the clear plastic and the bone inside. "You _found_ it? Gross."

"Figured you'd want to put it under your pillow or something," I joked. "Does your mom know?"

He shook his head. "No way. I'd have to tell her what happened if I said anything," he explained. "I'll make up a story tomorrow so I can get it fixed up, but it hurts like hell without the Vicodin."

I hummed in agreement. "Lemme see," I told him.

"See what?"

"Your mouth. Lemme see it," I repeated, zooming in towards him.

Kyle leaned back to avoid me. "Why? It's just a hole."

"Then show me your goddamn hole," I said. "It might be infected."

Kyle put his arms up in protest. "No— Kenny—" he said, trying not to smile and ruin his angry-face inbetween blocking me. It took me a minute, but I caught him at a sideways angle by the wrists.

"C'mon. Open."

Kyle sighed in defiance, and popped open his mouth. I grabbed my cell phone as a light after relinquishing his arms. Sure enough, there was a nasty looking lack of flesh where a back tooth should've been.

"I feehr suupid," he muttered as I spelunked the contents of his mouth via Samsung, my hand on his jaw directing his face right and left as needed.

"Don't worry, you look stupid too," I said. After a moment of playing professional, I dropped my hand. "You've gotta get that cleaned up, dude. Cartman really knocked you a good one."

He closed his mouth and swallowed some excess spit. "Yeah. I know." He rubbed the side of his face idly, either massaging his cheek or wiping off my cooties. "It just _sucks_, you know?" he said with more emotion than he'd let on until now. "'I've already got so much to worry about, and here he is trying to fuck with me."

I gave him an apologetic smile. "I know. He's trying to get shit from me too."

Kyle shook his head. "Yeah, but he doesn't _want_ anything from me. Not that I know of," he said, leaning back on the bed. "I don't get it. Why bother?"

I watched as Kyle repositioned himself, but I couldn't offer him an explanation. "Wish I could tell you. Maybe he just thinks you're easy to take advantage of."

"But I'm not."

I exhaled. "You made it seem that way in that photo."

Kyle looked over at me slidily, tucking his knees in. "Yeah, but I didn't take the photo. It's not like I was planning on it or anything."

"No offense Kyle, but you let it happen. You listen to Cartman, that's what you'll get."

"Shut up," Kyle cut in. "Just— okay, I know. Let's just leave it alone, okay?" He glared down at the carpet, his face turning a deeper shade of color. "I know I should've done something about it. Everyone at school thinks we're fags, and I can't even piss in the bathroom without guys thinking I wanna fuck them. It was stupid, I get it."

"It was really stupid, Kyle."

He sat up. "You know what, fuck you Kenny. You think it's funny? Get a molar knocked out of you and then we'll talk."

"Yeah, because losing a tooth is way worse than getting shot in the head," I retorted. I held up four fingers on my right hand. "That many times."

He didn't say anything, but he looked at me in disgust. Without anyone in the house, the only sound came from Kyle's headphones, filtered to just a buzzing melody. We stared at each other, seeing who would move first, or waiting for something or someone to break the silence.

I spoke first.

"I don't want to fight with you, Kyle. I don't want to prove anything." I sat, flipping my phone over in my hand, in a movement not unlike a reflex. "I just want you to stop hiding things from me."

His glare became less developed, and he looked down at the bedspread as I spoke. "I'm not trying to, I swear," he said, much more quietly than he had before. "I told you, I'm not used to being this— well, being this _open_ with you."

"Pretend I'm Stan," I said, trying to keep from being too sardonic.

He let out a sigh. "I'm not even that open with him, either. Not like we used to be."

"Yeah?" I asked, slightly surprised. I guess I should've expected it, considering Stan became a lot more invested with his girlfriend at the start of the year, but I never would've thought the Super Best Friends would willingly put up barriers.

"Yeah," he said flatly. Maybe it was just me, but it sounded like he was trying hard not to show any feeling. "Everybody's got their secrets, I guess."

I looked him over. Kyle wasn't a bad person, not by a long shot. He'd never done anything too ridiculously unforgivable, at least not in my book, but I still had an incongruent mixture of scorn and immense attachment to him, and it never failed to make me just a little bit sick to my stomach. I wanted Kyle, and that fact wasn't weird to me at all. It was the part of me that hated him for being so acute in everything he did that really tore me up.

We were friends. We were supposed to be friends.

"Tell me a secret, then," I finally said, staring him straight in the face. "Say something. See if you trust me enough."

"You know I d—"

"No," I interrupted. "You told me you didn't. Even just a month ago, you said you didn't trust me. What about now, Kyle? Should I even keep trying?" I looked at him, and studied the lines on his face, and the color on his cheeks. "Tell me a secret."

He avoided my stare, and kept his eyes on his socks. His iPod was still playing unintelligible music, just a little squeeze of sound emanating from the earbuds on the edge of his desk. I could hear my breathing, a waft of pitch vibrating through my head as I waited for him to say anything at all.

Anything.

"I like you, Kenny," he said quietly. He hesitated, chancing a look up at my face, before flicking his eyes back down at his toes. "I mean, I like you like I like Stan. Like a boy."

I listened.

"I don't want to like you," he continued.

I nodded, trying to keep my insides aligned. "That's okay. It's not like you can control who you—"

"Kenny," he whispered, stopping me in mid-sentence. He looked me in the eye, his gaze sharp and focused, but his expression was too hard to understand.

"Kenny," he said hoarsely, "I want you to die."

My eyelids blinked, and I realized I was holding my breath. I managed to get out a "What?" before having to inhale again.

"I want you to die. I want to know if any of this will matter if you—" he shook his head in error, "—When you come back."

I swallowed. "Of course it will. What are you talking about?"

He shrugged, in a motion that was much too lighthearted for what he was saying. "I want to know if I'll remember this. If you die again, I mean. I don't . . . " he paused, struggling for the right words, " . . . want to get too involved to have it all disappear. I've got too much on the line, Ken."

I looked at him with a hard gaze, not knowing how to respond to something like that. How long had he been thinking this over?

Something inside of my gut told me that I was going to lose. Kyle liked me. I sure as fuck wanted him to like me. But was this too big of a factor for him? Was it even a factor at all? I had to wonder. In the end, would the universe simply throw it all away?

"Well," I finally replied, slowly picking my words out one by one. "That's something you're just going to have to chance finding out." I lifted my chin up, daring him. "It's your choice, Kyle."

He stared at me for a second.

This wasn't destiny.

He leaned in.

Our mouths met, his lips forced against mine in a gravitational pull that spilled every ounce of adrenaline I had in me. I tasted skin and spit and tongue, in a mixture of obsession and restitution, as he pushed himself forward against my chest and we leaned into the bedding. Though I'd attacked him before, just once in a fit of anger and horny intentions, it was nothing compared to this— Kyle was letting out every last damn intendment he had, and we were swimming in the muddy light of his desk lamp.

This wasn't destiny— this was me and Kyle. This was determination.

This was motherfucking nirvana.

I flipped over, forcing a switch in position, before pressing down on his forearms for leverage. From his neck, I managed a few sentences, some that mattered and some that didn't— I wanted to know where, when, and how hard, until he stopped me after a moment—

"Dude."

The word jerked me back to reality.

"Dude. My phone is buzzing."

I caught my breath for a moment, and rolled off the top of him. He sat up. I had a sudden rush of blood to my brain; I couldn't hear so well, so I hoped he hadn't made the phone thing up.

He stepped over toward his desk, and after unlocking the keypad, he stared at the screen.

The color drained from his face completely.

"What?" I asked from his bed. "Is it your mom or something?"

He didn't break his stare, until he suddenly turned on his heel and darted towards the window. He didn't say anything as he dropped the phone on the bed next to me, the screen still lit up in white and turquoise lettering.

I picked it up, instantly feeling my stomach drop.

_10:02 PM_

_1 NEW MSSG_

_Sender: FATASS_

_I can see you._

I looked out the window, my face packed next to Kyle's, when I noticed an empty driveway. Token's car was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

I'd never lost a boner so quickly in my entire life.

I stared, my eyes drilling a hole into the spot where I'd left the car running. No. _No_, I thought, as I felt my hands gripping the lock on Kyle's window. I didn't acknowledge the pressure my teeth-shredded fingernails were under.

"No _fucking_ way!" I shouted.

"Dude," Kyle said. I didn't hear him at first.

"That fat piece of fucking _shit_—"

"_Dude_," Kyle repeated in a tone much more subdued than mine, though I couldn't ignore the worry in his voice. "Kenny—"

I felt my hand readjust itself— well, if "readjusting" meant slamming it on the window sill. "Kyle!" I answered sarcastically. "What? Are you not seeing this?"

"Calm the fuck down, dude!" It was obvious he was trying to keep his cool, but there was a nauseous sort of look on his face, kind of like Stan's usual expression before puking on Wendy. "Here," he said, handing me his cell phone, which was already dialing a number.

"What's—?"

"— Police," he cut in. "You had the plate number, right?"

I stared at him for a second before quickly ending the call. "Are you kidding me? I'm not waiting on the fucking cops to get here," I said. What was I supposed to tell them? _Hi, our friend— well, he's not really our friend— he stole a car that wasn't mine. And I don't have a license, but I've been driving all night. You understand, right Officer? _

Oh, the cocks I would suck to hear a "_Right, I understand_."

"Dude, I'm just trying to help," Kyle said, glaring at me. "He has Token's car. You're not going to do anything about it?"

"Yeah, and he probably has video record of your hard-on for me just now. You're not going to do anything about _that_?"

Kyle threw his hands up in disgust. "Fine! I give up. You do whatever the fuck you want, Kenny. See if it gets you anywhere."

Unfortunately for Kyle, I _was_ doing whatever the fuck I wanted. I was already halfway out his window, my right sneaker balancing on the overhang as I gripped the paneling, before Kyle turned and noticed where I was going.

"Dude!"

"You're too slow, Kyle!" I said over my shoulder, kicking my other foot out.

"What are you doing? We have stairs!" Kyle yelled after me.

I ignored him as I slid on my ass, careful not to break a roof tile. "You coming? If we hurry, we can make it to his place before he does anything with the car."

Kyle leaned out the window. "You're crazy!"

"And you're not helping!" I shouted back. "Are you coming or not?"

He quickly glanced back into his room, and for a moment I thought he heard something, but I think it was simply paranoia. He reluctantly faced me again. "I'm grounded, dude. I can't," he said.

Of course he couldn't. God, I swear he was worse than Butters sometimes.

I let my legs dangle over the edge of the overhang as I got a good grip on the gutter. "You're such a fairy," I replied, preparing for the worst if my palms got sliced on the way down.

"I am not," he said, lowering his volume. "I mean, my mom, what if she—"

"Dude. Fuck your mom! I'm _missing a car_!"

I groaned mentally at Kyle's stupid kindergarten morals as I dropped, stretching until my shoes hit the concrete of the driveway and my knees buckled from the impact. I stood up straight.

"I know, I know! Just— fine, hang on."

Again, he hesitated.

"Kyle! Down here!" I shouted. "Or I'm leaving without you!"

Kyle looked around aimlessly for what I assumed was someone to talk him out of it. But, because we were the only ones home, and I was the greatest bad influence he had right now, he sighed and leaned forward. "I'm so going to regret this, dude."

"You'll be fine," I said, albeit a little impatiently.

I watched as he kicked a leg over the windowsill and turned around to shut the pane. For some reason, I was expecting him to fall, but Kyle had always been fairly athletic. Hell, he would've made Junior Varsity basketball this year had Clyde not accidentally set off the fire alarm during a free-throw. I guess it was just Kyle's nature that made him seem like an uncoordinated dweeb.

He balanced on the overhang. "Want me to catch you?" I asked, only half-joking.

Kyle sat on the edge and prepped himself. "No way," he said, annoyed.

"Right. I forgot you were the catcher."

"Shut up. That's gross."

"You didn't think so five minutes ago."

"Aghh!" he groaned, eyeing the distance to the ground. "You're a jackass, you know that Kenny?"

I watched him as he leaned and slid off the roofing. He was joking, but his comment made me feel a weird mixture of pride and injury.

I was being overly sensitive. I know. I took a deep breath to calm myself down (not that it helped, like, at all), and watched Kyle.

"You good?"

He hit the ground. "Yeah."

But I wasn't sure why he was glowing. I squinted as he lit up completely, almost shocked, until I realized our shadows were blocking out the fluorescent hi-beams that suddenly washed over the garage door. Kyle steadied himself and stood, and in less than a second his already worried expression dropped into horror. I stumbled backwards into him as I turned around, face to face with the Broflovski family Honda Fit.

"Kyle?"

Gerald's window was rolled down as he pulled into the driveway, the engine as quiet as I should've expected a Hybrid's to be.

"What's this? What are you doing?" Sheila called out, popping open the passenger door before Kyle's dad even stopped the car. She stood up, hand on top of the window, staring us down as we were frozen in their brights.

We didn't blink. I could see little bits of dust and dirt floating in the air, illuminated by the headlights. We didn't blink once, even if a bit got in my eye.

"Kyle!" she repeated when he didn't answer. "You're supposed to be _upstairs_, in your _room_!" Her gaze flickered back and forth between the two of us, sometimes lingering longer on me than on her son.

"I— I'm sorry, mah, I was just—"

"—You were just _what_, Kyle?" she asked back, setting her things down on the roof of the car. "You're grounded! I don't know where you think you were going—"

Kyle shifted his weight. "But mom, you don't— I mean, you don't understand—"

Gerald pulled the keys out of the now-silent ignition, and the headlights abruptly cut off into darkness. Unfortunately, the motion-sensor porch-light had switched on in its absence when Ike clambered out of the backseat. I didn't like it, because I saw everyone's faces, and nobody was happy.

"Kyle, listen to your mother," Gerald said, passing his lanyard off to Ike, who didn't say a word. He carried a bag of leftovers with him as he ducked into the doorway— I didn't blame him for avoiding the situation, but I hated him for being able to retreat.

_Fuck_! I didn't have time for this.

I looked sideways at Kyle, who was stricken with the Black Plague of all emotions; I didn't understand how he could be so afraid of his parents. To me, it seemed stupid. My parents never gave two shits about anything other than themselves— I didn't worry about upsetting them. What was Kyle's worst-case scenario? He got grounded for an extra week? Two?

His voice played over in my head. _She said it was okay. She said she didn't have a gay son. _

I nudged him in the side.

"C'mon," I whispered. "Let's just take off."

He shot me a dirty look, or at least he attempted to.

"You hear me Kyle?" Sheila continued. "Upstairs, _now_. Kenny, I'm sorry, but goodbye. You need to leave."

"Mrs. Broflovski—" I tried, but she shook her head.

"_Home_, Kenny. Go home. Kyle and I need to talk."

I stood in place, weighing what little options I had and hoping Kyle would turn to run, but I knew he never would. Though I hated to even think it, I was on my own for the night.

Kyle made me really upset sometimes. It reminded me that in the end, we really _were_ different.

. . . I'd forgotten about that, for a while.

I tried to focus on Cartman as I pulled my phone out, ready to dial a call he surely wouldn't pick up, but Sheila and Kyle's conversation was too heavy. She had him by the shoulder as she led him back up the walk.

"—First the Vicodin, now you're _sneaking out_— Oy _gevalt_, what's gotten into you, I don't _know_—"

I forced myself forward, needing to run, because my body knew that running would save Token's car; going faster would make Cartman easier to find, but I couldn't shift out of a slow walk.

Sheila stopped mid-sentence. "Is— that," she said, now only slightly audible due to the distance. "What's that on your neck, Kyle?"

My heart pounded as I snapped out of it and took off, cursing at myself for needing to escape before being blamed. I was scared, or something like it— angry, pissed at Kyle for letting her see it, pissed at myself for breaking a blood vessel in the crevice under his jaw. I was deserting him. Leaving him to explain things. He couldn't lie to them, not now.

What would happen? More importantly, what _was_ happening? What would his parents do after seeing hard evidence that moments ago, their only biological son was, for lack of a better term, _underneath_ me?

Maybe Kyle was right. I really was a jackass.

Maybe I was just like my parents.

Cartman's phone went straight to voicemail, and I let out every bad word I'd ever known. His pre-recorded message ended, and I called him every name I'd ever come up with. I poured myself out of my own mouth, wishing my weakest words were as powerful as tidal waves, until I ran out of breath and started huffing into the receiver— everything was _perfect_, everything was the best it ever was in my entire fucking _life_, and he ruined it. He tore Kyle away from me. All four minutes of a heaven greater than any I'd ever gone to after dying; all four minutes of my dick, hard against denim, and his, against _me_—

I choked down my own pathetic sounds. I had to sit, a block from Kyle's house, unable to go any further. I _had_ to find the car. I _had_ to.

I hadn't cried since CPS visited our house in eighth grade.

I wanted to have Kyle be my greatest priority, to have him be the most goddamn important thing on my list to save from danger, but he wasn't. I couldn't even go back and save him from his own stupid family, let alone grab him up for my own personal well-being. I needed to leave, and I knew I had to leave him behind, but I was too tired.

I was going to sit here forever, my knees tucked up and my ass on the cold curb, until everything went away and it was all _right_ again.

Five minutes, or two hours, passed. I would've died of hypothermia if it was any more than that, so I knew it wasn't any later than midnight when Clyde's F-150 slowed to a stop in front of me.

"Dude," he said, power windows rolling down. "You okay?"

I saw my reflection in his hubcaps. I looked shitty; almost as bad as Stan after a routine breakup.

"Don't worry 'bout it," I forced out, shakily standing up so I wouldn't seem too lame. I looked into the cab, my mind on one conversational track only. "You seen Cartman?"

Someone said something from the passenger seat; he wasn't alone in the truck. Kevin and Craig were fighting over the radio. Clyde ignored them as the volume increased, and he leaned out the window.

"We just came from the tailgate in the parking lot. He was probably there," he shrugged. I nodded, but I knew this wasn't reliable information. Craig had an open can of Tilt in hand, and Clyde wasn't exactly sober enough to be a DD.

He lifted his chin. "You ditch Bebe earlier?"

I shook my head. "No. She was cool with it."

He scoffed, leaning back in his seat, before turning back to me. "Didn't seem cool with it. She was shoved off in a corner all night."

He said it in a really obnoxious sort of way, like it was _my_ fault she had shitty friends. It pissed me off, but I kept myself in check. "She told me I could take off. I had somewhere to be."

"Yeah?" he asked, his tone a little doubtful. "I don't know. Just seemed like a douchey thing to do, y'know?"

If Clyde was so worried about her, then why the fuck was he complaining to me? He was there. He could've walked over and hung out with her. She wasn't _that _bad, for once.

"It's not my fault you broke up with her last month," I said simply, too brazen to care. "I wanted to hit that tonight, but I didn't, 'cuz I figured you were going to first—"

"Fuck you, man," he said. "Keep your cock in your own piece of ass."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Broflovski, dude. There's no use in hiding it; I mean, we all know you're faggy for each other—"

"—False info," I said sharply. "Again, why I'm looking for Cartman."

Clyde smiled in a humor that lasted for only a second before it melted back into a scowl. "Didn't you just hear me? I don't know where he is. And don't even try to fuckin' lie, Kenny. Bebe told me you took off for Kyle's place earlier."

I felt pressure on my newly budding wisdom teeth. I was clenching my jaw.

"I didn't—"

"—You ditched her for your boyfriend," he interrupted again. Craig and Kevin were paying attention now. "I don't even give a fuck about a cunt like him. It's when you mess around with my ex that I get pissed."

I made an involuntary motion towards him, which caused him to crack a grin. "Yeah? You angry?" he asked, and I heard him drag the automatic into park before popping open his door. He edged his way out, staring me down. "You know, I pulled over 'cuz I was kinda worried about you. Didn't know you were going to be a dick about things," he said, taking a step forward.

"Dude, don't," Kevin called from inside the truck.

Clyde ignored him. "Whaddaya wanna do, Kenny? You wanna fight me? I didn't do a damn thing to you."

I watched him with a keen eye, already feeling completely worn out from jumping off a house and aimlessly looking for any evidence of Grand Theft Auto, but I knew he was trying to get me to cave. It was pure adrenaline keeping me standing at this point, and I certainly didn't have any emotion left to hold me back.

If Clyde knew what was good for him, he'd shut the fuck up.

"By all means, back off," I said, my hands surrendered in the air. "You're the one looking to prove yourself right now."

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, the suddenness of it making me jump just a little bit. Clyde backed up a step— he must've seen it as a "violent" advancement.

"I've got nothing to prove," Clyde offered, watching my every move. "I'm not the one chasing Kyle's cum here."

"Clyde—" I warned him, since he wasn't a bad guy.

"— I mean, no offense, but you and your family don't have anything else to eat, right?"

The cocky grin on his face was gone when I slammed him back against his truck by the collar. He looked up, shocked, and tried to get a grip on my wrists, but even though he was built pretty thickly through the core, I wasn't letting go.

He wasn't a bad guy, but he was a dead motherfucking horse, and I didn't care if I beat him until the crack of dawn.

"This what you wanted, Clyde?" I said through gritted teeth. "This how you wanted to spend your Friday night?"

He tried to get his neck further away from my hands, but in the struggle he managed to knock the back of his head pretty good against the rear passenger window in the process. From inside the truck, Craig and Kevin were shouting something, but I didn't understand English all that well right now.

"Dammit, Kenny— knock it off—"

I shoved him against the truck again, short, quick, and hard. "You don't get to fuck with me and expect me to be nice. You hear me?"

He didn't answer, but looked up at me rather lazily.

"I said you hear me, Clyde?"

He squinted, in what I thought was defiance, until his weight took ahold of my forearms and he started to slope down against the truck door. My face was screwed up in the attempt to understand what he was doing—

"Need to sit," he mumbled, as he kicked out his legs once he reached the ground. Craig had already jumped out of the truck on the other side and rounded the front of it; he looked at me, and then looked at Clyde, and shook his head. For some reason, this kind of worried me.

"Uh, Kenny?" he said quickly, leaning down to Clyde's level and motioning me backwards. "Lay off for a sec, will you?"

I watched as they said something to one another, not audible enough for me to hear from a yard away, until Craig looked over his shoulder at me again. I caught my breath.

"I think he's got a concussion."

He motioned up at Kevin, who was leaning out of the now open window, and then turned his attention back to Clyde. "You hit your head?"

Clyde nodded, slightly, as he licked his lips absently. "Yeah."

Fuck.

"Dude, I need my phone," Craig said, motioning up to Kevin.

_Fuck. _

I stood, my average level of self-control returning as the seconds flew by, and I replayed everything in my mind. I didn't hit him. He'd snapped his _own_ head back, not me. I didn't need to worry, right?

Clyde was complaining about his ears, or some ringing in them or shit. I watched as Craig went through his address book; clearly he didn't know his parents' phone number by heart, but he got them on the line within a minute.

I didn't hit him. It wasn't my fault.

I found myself repeating the phrase over and over again in my head. _I didn't hit him. I didn't need to worry._

From three feet away, I caught a sentence of Craig's hushed phone conversation when he chanced a quick look at me. "Yeah, he's still here. Yeah. Okay."

Panic was beginning to set in. Ididn't_hit_himIdidn't_hit_himIdidn't_hit_him. I didn't hate Clyde; I was provoked. It wasn't my fault. I'm a lazy, nonviolent animal, most of the time- surely everyone would understand that. I stood, dumbly, watching Kevin jump out of the truck and check up on his friend. My mind scanned through the entire zoo, thinking of every gentle creature there was. _Yes_, I quickly and stupidly thought, I was a motherfucking _giraffe_. I didn't intend to mess him up-

"Kenny, where you going?"

I found myself idling backwards, stepping further away from the truck as time raced by. I knew where this was going; if Craig's parents were on the way, they would've called Clyde's- No, no, I didn't want this right now.

"Kenny!"

I offered a weak shrug, knowing it was nowhere near the apology I intended it to be, and left Craig and Kevin to their business. I was hopping, in a nervous sort of way, when I walked, until it turned into a full canter in the direction of my house. I didn't know what else to do. This wasn't supposed to happen, not after an altercation with Kyle's parents, and certainly not after leaving him to fend for himself in the Court of Homosexual Explanations. Not after the car I'd promised Token would be okay was jacked within ten minutes of parking it.

Somewhere, in my morally screwed-up brain, I put the blame on Kyle. None of this would've happened if he would've just told me the fucking truth when I texted him. No one would be upset with me or him or anyone else if he would've just said _Hey, I didn't go out tonight._ I wouldn't have rushed to his house like a paranoid lunatic, left the keys in the ignition and the car door unlocked, if he would've just _talked_ to me.

I felt my chest tighten up. Kyle left _his_ door unlocked too.

Maybe we weren't that different after all.

I didn't remember that I'd missed a call until I was on my front lawn. When I pulled it out of my pocket, I was a little freaked to see that it was one o'clock in the morning. The display, which never really lit up all the way because it was old, also said I'd missed six calls from Stan.

I didn't wait until I was inside to call him back. He picked up on the second ring, which was a little odd for him- not that I was intentionally keeping track of these things.

"Dude, where are you?"

His voice filtered through, and it sounded like tin. I stepped sideways for better reception.

"I'm at home. What happened?" I asked, ignoring the fact that I may very well be arrested for assault and battery any second now. "You called six times?"

"Yeah. We've got a problem. Like, _seriously_."

I snorted out a nervous laugh. Of course we had a problem. There was always a problem. I couldn't possibly panic more about the situation.

"What's wrong?"

He said something, which got distorted due to my crappy service. "What?— one more time."

"I said I'm on my way. I'll pick you up in like five minutes."

I paced, stepping over the unwound garden hose and my sister's old Slip n' Slide, which was never put away for the winter. "Wait, what? Why?"

"Kyle's gone."

I almost tripped on the hose, because I wasn't looking down anymore. "What?"

"Kyle's missing, dude."

I started to say something, but I didn't know what actually came out of my mouth. I thought a million things at once, when my mind wasn't completely blank.

"He's _what_? Where the hell did he go?" I asked.

Stan sighed. "I was hoping you'd know."

I laughed out a _fuck_, reeling in Stan's wonderful news. Of course I didn't know. It was Sheila, or it was Cartman. It was Kyle in a bad mood, or the promise of reform camp, or a couple of sleeping pills. It was a thousand different possibilities, none of which I had any control over, and none of which had any leads. I couldn't do anything but smile, hating my life and everything it threw at me.

When I finally tried to respond to Stan—

The cherry on top of my night, and the worst omen I could've hoped for.

My phone died.

* * *

A/N: Dear "angst": I hate writing you. Sincerely, me. In other news, anyone hit up the SP Experience at Comic Con? 'Twas bomb.


	13. Chapter 13

Leftovers

Summary: Kyle's a little less than amused when Kenny's not dead after all. If the rules of the universe don't apply, then what else has Kyle been wrong about all these years? K2, M for language.

Disclaimer: I just make awkward plotlines out of Matt and Trey's stuff. I own nothing.

* * *

I never really wore socks that often, so my feet were numbing with every passing second in which Stan wasn't here. My winter get-up was usually good enough for daytime hours, in which the sun kept me alive despite my thin layers and beaten up boots, but at night, it was a killer. I stopped trying to run around with the guys past eight-thirty nowadays— I regretted it, but I didn't want to die a death as boring as hypothermia.

I should've been cold, by now. I thought about it as I waited, standing in my front lawn dumbly and drained of every emotion I should have possessed considering the circumstances. I should have felt a sort of pain down near my toes, and my balls should've been clinging like hopelessly dead icicles to my groin, but I didn't feel a thing. Maybe I _was_ dying of hypothermia. Maybe I was already covered in blackened patches of skin, not noticing the frostbite I was bound to have on the tips of every phalange—

The only thing I felt, at all, was a buzzing in my chest, telling me that everything was wrong. I was nervous and beaten up and worried as fuck, but I couldn't think about anything but Stan's phone call. Kyle was missing. _Kyle was missing._ I instinctively reached for my phone and dialed a number out of reflexive memory, until I remembered that yes, my phone was dead.

And I'd never felt less alive. I watched my arm chuck the piece of plastic and metal on the ground, out of anger and spite. It landed in an icy patch near my right foot.

I looked up when I heard a car. Stan pulled up quick and smooth, in his mother's old Mitsubishi that had the "South Park Elementary: Student of the Month" sticker on the back (Stan only got that award once, back in third grade, but his mom never took it off, even after it faded beyond recognition). He hastily rolled down the window.

"C'mon, we've gotta hurry; Mom still thinks I'm at Wendy's," he said. I could hear how worried he was, but I knew it wasn't about getting in trouble.

He _was_ Kyle's best friend, after all.

I nodded as I made a twitchy move forward, but hesitated as I looked back down at my phone. For some reason, my brain deliberated whether I should bring it or not.

"Dude," Stan prompted me. "You coming?"

I nodded again. "Yeah," I replied, still staring at my phone, unharmed in its outdated design and chunky build. I wanted to pick it up in the hopes that it would reanimate itself; that somehow, it could miraculously regain a full charge (or even a little charge), and Kyle would call me and ask me to save him.

Kyle never liked being saved, though. In retrospect, he'd rescued _me_ more times than I could count. I wanted to laugh. . . or cry. _I_ was supposed to be the fucking superhero around here. I was supposed to help _him_ when he needed it— no, I'd left him to deal with his mother, to explain things that would surely get him grounded or locked up or castrated, depending on who you were talking to.

I took in a sharp breath of air. Kyle was missing because something went wrong. Because of _me_.

Stan threw a swear word my way, and I snapped out of my comatose state. "Right. Sorry," I said, jogging over to the passenger door and throwing myself inside. The interior was warm and dark, since Stan had the heater on high. I gladly welcomed the feeling back into my fingers as he rounded the corner, driving much too fast for a residential neighborhood.

"Slow down," I told him flatly. "It gets slippery up here."

He didn't say anything as he adjusted his speed only slightly. Stan wore his emotions on his steering wheel, which wasn't good for a fifteen year-old unlicensed driver.

"How'd you find out? When did you last hear from him?" I asked him, not caring if I sounded too eager. I was still a little out of breath.

"Ike called," he said. "Not too long ago. Like maybe twenty minutes before I called you," he explained, completely disregarding a stop sign. "Dude, something happened, like his parents were super pissed about something, and he just took off."

I stared at the dashboard. "Did Ike say what happened? What their parents said?"

Stan glanced over at me for a second, and I felt my insides twist up, but I realized he was just checking the intersection. "Not really. But they were on the house phone for a long time, and he said they were looking up numbers in the phone book or something— I heard his parents fighting in the background. Not like crazy fighting or anything, but still," he said.

I hummed. I tried not to picture the scene in my head: Kyle being marched inside for an explanation about the 'sneaking out' thing, and then being in full lamplight, and his parents realizing just how new his hickey was . . .

Me, Kyle, Stan, and Cartman got in trouble one time in elementary school for comparing dick sizes. It wasn't gay at all, but his parents railed on him for "indecent exposure" for a month after it happened. What would they do if they found out their son really _was_ gay?

I looked over at Stan, who was so keenly focused, yet _so_ bad at maneuvering on the road. What would he do if he knew about Kyle? That after all of these years he was the subject of Kyle's every last damn dream, and he was _so _much more to him than just a "super best friend"?

I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes. I wanted to be Stan. Not the douche-y sports Stan, or the friends-with-everyone Stan, but the one that was reserved for Kyle alone. The Stan who was doing a better job at saving Kyle than I was.

That was the difference between Stan and me. Yeah, sure, there were other things that set us apart, like how he stuck to one girl for ten years and didn't even get a BJ out of her, or how he had his shitty goth phases and wrote bad poetry about society and shit. There were a ton of differences between us, but that's not what I'm getting at. I guess what really made Stan a good kid was his _obligation_ to help. Sure, he'd always help the people who asked (and I'd never asked), but it really wasn't out of good will. The ones who needed help were his friends or his family or people who were already well to-do, and so, those kinds of people help each other out. Me, on the other hand— I was born into a family where I was taught to take as much as people were willing to give me. It sucked. I was never supposed to donate anything at church, or share my lunch with the other kindergartners because I'd get whacked on the ass for it. My family had nothing but burnt aspirations and plenty of alcohol, and though I'd always _wanted_ to help— to save every last fucking kid in the city from feeling like I did— I never got to go through with it.

Stan was a good kid because he had the practice. He was raised to be a good kid.

Me? I am, and always will be a shitty guy. I'm not too depressed over it, because it's the truth. I couldn't help Kyle because instinctively, I was trained not to. I'm anything but a good kid, and I guess that's what life intended.

Stan made an abrupt U-turn, and my face slammed sideways into the window.

"Dude!" I called out, my hand against my now-throbbing cheekbone.

"Kyle just texted me," he said, not even bothering to look over. His phone, now resting in the cupholder, was still lit up for a second before the timer set it back to a black screen. I grabbed it; Stan didn't protest.

The newest message in the inbox simply read "_Bus stop"_. I couldn't help but wonder if he tried to text me too. A part of me didn't want to think about it, because I suspected he didn't text me a damn thing. How could I blame him?

Stan accelerated as he made his way down the empty road, passing fences and sleeping cows over by where I worked last summer. I made money, and it was a good amount, but I'd blown most of it on Gatorade and weed. Looking back, I was a little disappointed in myself for not being responsible, but at the time, I couldn't give a greater fuck. Freshman year wasn't my favorite.

"When did you and Kyle stop hanging out?" I asked, remembering the first few weeks of high school.

Stan made a very subtle face, before turning back to a neutral statue. "What do you mean?"

"Kyle mentioned it," I shrugged, fingering the drawstrings on my hood. "Said you two didn't really hang out that much anymore."

Stan signaled to make a left turn, for the first time tonight. The road was empty and the action was completely unnecessary. "I dunno. I mean I have practice a lot, and Wendy sucks up a lot of my time, but we still hang out," he said. "Don't really know what he's talking about."

I thought about how we used to play basketball on the courts after school when we were nine, and then I wondered whether Stan realized we'd all gone separate ways. Sure, we all still saw each other at school, and we sometimes went to get lunch together, but compared to when we were kids? I didn't even get invited to Token's last party. Maybe, I thought, Stan was just trying to keep the peace. Maybe he was just humoring our sense of nostalgia when he made time for us.

And then, I thought, _no_; Stan loved Kyle. Not in the sexual kind of way, but in the sense that he'd never blow him off. I could tell just by looking at his face, with his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel, that Kyle meant a lot to him. Though I'd always lived closer to Stan, and I met him before anyone else when we were kids, he'd always dedicated himself to his best friend.

I didn't understand how he could be so oblivious. Unless Kyle was exaggerating, I didn't know why Stan hadn't noticed he'd only hung out with Kyle once in the past two weeks.

"I think he misses you," I said. _And he wants to fuck you, but I'll leave that part out._

Stan looked like he tried to say something, but he bobbed his head in an understanding way. "Yeah," he managed to say, but it sounded a lot less confident than the last time he spoke. In all honesty, I couldn't tell if he was trying to express emotion or if he was choking down a dick; it kind of looked more like the latter than the former. "I don't mean to leave him alone all the time. I just have so much to keep up with, you know?" he told me, a faint apologetic smile tugging at his cheek. "It just sucks."

I made it a point to look at the windshield. "I know."

Stan kept driving, and we sat in a moment of silence for what I presumed was our dead friendship. There would be no service, no flag, and no gravemarker for what we both knew was the passing of our childhood, and though I knew Stan was only mourning his and Kyle's lost time together, I almost wanted to tell him that _I _missed Stan too. I missed being able to hang out without an excuse, and I missed his guest bathroom on the first floor, which always calmed me down, in a way.

I saw Kyle and the bus stop approaching on the opposite side of the street, and I nudged Stan in the elbow so he wouldn't miss him. I doubted anyone could; Kyle was wearing his usual head covering and his old bright jacket— a highlighter in the dark, and an example of how much he hadn't grown since he stopped wearing it at age twelve.

Stan whipped around, bringing the car to a stop in front of the curb where Kyle looked up and had a little energy left for a smile, which was good. I knew it wasn't for me, but I pretended it was. Stan popped the door open on his side and rounded the front of the car; it wasn't even a minute later and he already had Kyle's bags over his shoulder and in the trunk. The engine was still on (something that reminded me of the horrors I'd have to face regarding auto theft), and I stood up and got out, but I don't know why I did that, since I ended up getting in the back seat anyway. Kyle looked all right. He was visibly shaken, but he was all right. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to run at him and tackle him to the ground while I called him a stupid Jew-bagel for making us worry. I wanted him to sit in the back with me, and lean his head against my shoulder, and make me feel like less shit than I did, but he sat up front with Stan.

I wasn't expecting him to do any of that stuff. I understood the unspoken contract between the three of us; Kyle and Stan always sat together, in the front, if one of them was driving. It was nature, and it was ritual.

I was too jaded to care. I told myself I was too jaded to care.

Stan turned the heat off, because it was really fucking hot by the time we took off again. Kyle didn't seem to mind, considering he'd been out in the open February air for some time now, but he still had his jacket on.

"Radio or no radio?" Stan asked him, finally starting some conversation. At least I thought it was intended to be conversation, but I guess it wasn't— Kyle shrugged, and Stan didn't make a move to turn the volume up. I realized it was one of their stupid Jedi mind evaluations, and Stan was only gauging his response.

It shouldn't have pissed me off— the fact that they were communicating in psychological tactics— but it did. I told Stan, very plainly, that I wanted the radio on. He hesitated, eyeing me in the rear view, but he obliged, and I felt like a dick.

What was wrong with me? I'd been wandering around like a zombie all night, freaking out over the fact that I'd lost Token's car and beaten the shit out of Clyde, and all I could worry about now was Stan and Kyle's relationship? What was I so afraid of? I wasn't going to _lose_ Kyle to Stan— mostly because Stan wasn't gay, but partly because Kyle was never _mine_ to begin with. Bebe was absolutely right. I _was_ jealous. I was being selfish and needy and poor, just like how I was raised to be. I had nothing to offer Kyle, no donation to make to the national Synagogue of boyfriendhood, and still, I wanted everything from him.

How bad of a person was I if I didn't care? If, in a way, I was fucking _proud_ of it?

I was feeling bold. I leaned forward, still unbuckled in the middle seat, and propped my elbows up on each of the seats in front of me.

"Hey Kyle."

He didn't look over at me. "Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

He didn't nod. "Yeah."

I fingered the metal rods of the headrests, my left hand closing in near Stan's neck, and my right against the fabric of Kyle's hat. "Give me a more convincing answer, will you?" I asked.

Stan glanced sideways for a brief moment. "Lay off, Kenny."

I ignored him. "No, really," I said, scooting further up in my seat. "Are you okay? Did anything bad happen?" I asked, because it was my fucking right to. Stan always had to pussyfoot around with things like this.

Kyle shook his head, just a little bit. "I'm fine."

He didn't look fine. "Then why run away? You make it seem like some big deal; I mean of _course_ you're not _fine_—"

"—Kenny," Stan warned again, but I was tired of his stupid need to protect Kyle. He was being a douchebag— I was Kyle's friend too. He didn't have _dibs_ on Kyle.

"How bad is—" I started, not finishing my sentence, because Stan didn't know about the hickey on Kyle's neck. "Never mind, just let me see it," I said as my right hand found its way toward Kyle's jacket collar, tugging against the lining—

I felt my arm jolt downwards as Kyle swatted it away, simultaneous with an angry jumble coming out of Stan's mouth.

"Fuck, Kenny, stop it, okay?" Kyle said, a sharpness under his breath that made me withdraw my hand in a swift motion. I stared at him. At them.

"Just stop," Kyle added, a lot quieter, but still just as able to cut me open like surgical steel. It took me a moment, but I leaned back in my seat, and resorted to looking out the window. I didn't know what that was, but it almost sounded like rejection.

I saw Stan give Kyle a sympathetic smile, just small and unnoticeable enough that I almost didn't catch it. I wanted to kick something.

No one spoke, and the tension hung in the air like carcinogenic smog— Kyle was pissed at me, and Stan was pissed at me, and, _oh_, Stan just asked Kyle if he'd like to stay the night at his place. Kyle said "yeah", the same word he'd used to answer me twice, but this time it wasn't a lie.

I leaned my head back, watching the sky out of the rear windshield. I was just checking to see if he was okay. Fuck.

I kept it together as I watched the power lines weave up and down as we sped past them, getting brighter and brighter as streetlights passed and then quickly fading into blackness again. The rhythm taunted me, because it was like watching seconds go by on the clock in homeroom. Wires go up, wires go down. Up, down. Up—

I blinked away the stupid water in my eyes.

It wasn't fair. I was the one checking on Kyle all night. _I_ was the one who went to his house to make sure he wasn't locked in his room arbitrarily. Fuck Stan, and fuck his heroism. _I_ was the one who had Kyle's skin against mine,, who had the roots of his meticulously hidden curls tangled up in my hands—

"Here you go, Ken," Stan said minutes later, as I readjusted my head and saw my driveway already in front of us.

— I was the one being dropped off.

I hesitated for only a second before sliding out the back door, and waved a curt "adios" to the two of them. I didn't dare show my pissy face, because by now, I knew I must've looked sucker-punched. After all, I'd only gotten in _one_ fight tonight.

The front lawn was still laced with icy morning frost, and I quickly scrambled for my cell phone. I didn't want to touch it earlier, when all it did was bring me bad news and heaps of shitty text messages, but now, for some reason, I didn't want it out of my sight. As dead as it was, I knew that somewhere, embedded on the phone card under the fifty Playboy Playmate of the Day updates and the single-worded replies from people like Stan, there were messages I wanted to keep.

_Good luck today_ was one of them. The kind where Kyle actually seemed to care.

My shoes were kicked off once I got in my room. I instinctively reached for the phone charger (which was duct taped at the end because the encasing shredded off a few months ago) and watched as my screen lit up with pretentious glowing hope.

That sounded really faggy, even to me. How messed up was I if I thought of phrases like that?

The missed calls notification popped up, as usual, because it was a fucking piece of annoying shit that never went away. Seven missed calls. I already knew that.

I stretched out on my bed, trying not to think of Stan and Kyle comfortably brushing their teeth together—and then I got mad at myself for thinking about Kyle's teeth. Stan didn't know about that either, or even the Vicodin, which is why Kyle was grounded in the first place. Stan didn't know _anything_.

I burrowed under my pillow. I hated this. I hated complaining. I'd easily done enough of it when I was a kid, and I never learned to appreciate anything. I hated thinking about how much I hated everything in the world right now, and how much I wanted to punch Cartman's fat slab of ass steak, and how much nobody would even fucking care if I stuck my head in the microwave for three minutes on Defrost—

I blinked. This was exactly how it happened before.

So, I've got a freaky little confession to make. Back in the beginning, when I said I wasn't suicidal? Back when I told Kyle repeatedly that I was more or less _bored_ when he saw me blow my face off?

I flipped open my phone, exposing even more of the scraped paint-job and faded keys, and composed a new message.

RECIPIENT: KYLE (CELL)

BLANK TXT DOCUMENT

_So I did it on purpose_

MSSG SENT

I knew it wasn't a big deal for someone like me, who regenerated more times than a goddamn phoenix on a weekly basis. I knew that, yes, there were times when I'd accidentally killed myself by falling down staircases or mistaking rat poison for vitamins— they weren't Flintsone-shaped, so how was I supposed to know? — but times like these were different. I guess that for someone like me, who can never stay dead for long, my self-induced deaths were kind of special. Just for a moment, whenever I killed myself like this, I'd cherish it as ceremonial; for once in my life, I was cheating fate, and nothing else in the world mattered but the blood in my veins and the constricted lungs in my chest. It was almost as if my suicide was a celebration, a make-believe fantasy of the dead finality I'd never have.

I closed my eyes, breathing in the stagnant air above my bed, and I smiled out of hideous grief. My friend Kyle was the only one who'd ever mourned me.

I immediately thought of the gun that started it all, and my eyes shifted toward my closet. The wood paneling slanted sideways; the door always slid off its trucking and I never bothered to fix it.

But my stomach dropped, because nothing was laying at the foot of the door.

_Where was my gun? _

I hadn't moved it since the night that got me into this whole mess. I mean, yeah, my dad could've swiped it, or Kevin could've come in and tried to hock some of the more expensive stuff, but that didn't seem quite right to me. The last time either of them dared to enter my room, I had a Super Soaker full of piss that was used as necessary. I was eleven.

I sat up and reached over for the lamp on my nightstand. In the light, it became increasingly evident: the gun was gone.

At first, I thought I was panicking because I really wanted the gun in my hands for personal use (as I never dealt with my depression too well), but then I realized that I was _more_ afraid of someone entering my room. If my gun was gone, someone would've had to break in—

I took a moment to praise myself for worrying about that. Maybe it meant I was feeling better.

My phone buzzed, and I jumped a little. It was a text from Kyle, in reply to what I'd sent him a minute before.

_You did what on purpose_

He didn't use punctuation when he was upset. I'd noticed that a while back.

_Never mind, U ok? _I sent, deciding that I didn't want to tell him about my foray into self-destructive tendencies when he was already upset, and especially not when I had a new mystery on my hands. I hit the "back" button to get out of the messaging menu, and the stupid Missed Calls panel popped up again. Fuck, yes, seven missed calls, I already freakin' _got_ it, Samsung—

I stopped, suddenly remembering that Stan only called me _six_ times.

Immediately, I navigated back to the panel, clicking on "view details" in a reheated curiosity. I was hoping, as morons in love tend to hope, that it was from Kyle, but the screen displayed a name that made me wish I had _two_ of my guns.

I called my voicemail.

_Hey faggot, how's it going? Hope you had fun at the dance tonight; I mean, yeah, I probably woulda hung there 'til it ended, because I heard it was super awesome, but I totally get why you had to take off. It's cool._

_So, yeah, just wanted to call and say thanks for taking care of Token's ride. It's super sweet, dude. You should really be a mechanic or something. The blue-collar world will really miss you when you go off to college— you want to go, right? I mean, it's cool if you don't. It'd probably be better for your mom anyway if you stayed at home rather than sucking up her welfare money for tuition. _

_Um, so then, just calling to let you know I'm taking great care of the car. I'll probably get it back to you tomorrow, if you want to stop by and pick it up. I'll be in the parking lot around nine, or whenever you're done eating dinner. Just let me know._

_Oh wait, sorry about that dinner crack. That was rude of me. I forgot you still don't have any. _

_Later Kinny. _

I listened to the message on repeat, trying to calm myself down even a little bit. I listened to it three times, hoping to get a single hint out of where Cartman stowed Token's car (he wanted to "meet me"? Like _that_ wasn't suspicious at all), but I got so frustrated that I snapped the phone shut mid-sentence right after he said "welfare".

I stared at my phone, which was now laying dormant on my bedspread. If I killed myself right now, I thought ironically, it wouldn't feel very much like a celebration.

_Maybe I should wait for my birthday,_ I smirked.

Aside from my dark deliberation (in which I was only half-serious about), nothing much happened for a minute or two until the screen lit up again.

Kyle replied.

_Mom's sending me to reform. I dont want to talk right now_

I'd figured. Why else would Kyle try to hightail it out of his house?

But then I got a second text, one I didn't send a reply to right away.

_I came out to Stan._

This kind of surprised me, and made me a little uncomfortable at the same time. A part of me wanted him to keep it a secret forever, but I knew doing things like that drove a person crazy. I understood that. What I _didn't_ want, for some reason, was Stan knowing about Kyle and me. While the rest of the school already figured we were fucking, I wanted the simplicity of the matter to stay _simple_. We'd made out. We'd held hands. Nothing more, nothing less.

Stan didn't need to know how beautifully simple it was.

_whatd he say,_ I texted back.

Two minutes for a reply.

_He doesn't care. _

Oh.

_do you,_ I asked.

Two more minutes. I expected an answer within seconds, actually, but Kyle took his time.

_No_

I sighed, setting my phone down on the nightstand. I was planning on telling him about Cartman, and maybe even asking if I could come over to talk, but it was already two in the morning and I was tired. I guess my actions mirrored what Kyle said; I really didn't care either.

. . . Who was I kidding. I cared more than anything.

For once in my life, I gave a flying fuck.

I handled my phone for the last time before passing out. I knew I was already going over my texting limit, and I'd probably have my service shut off for a day or two until I paid the bill, but it felt like I needed to say it.

_The gun. i did it on purpose. just thought you deserved to know_

I was nearly asleep, my brain telling me to wake up and worry, to find the missing weapon and the missing car; to patch together the missing piece of what little "relationship" Kyle and I had. I blinked an eye open as the object in my hand vibrated again, and I squinted to read it in the low milky light of my lamp.

_Can I come over tomorrow?_


End file.
